The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) has appointed a new head of ticketing in the wake of last month's ticket sales incident.

Zhu Yan (R), the newly-appointed director of the Olympic ticketing center, speaks at a press conference in Beijing November 30. Zhu introduced the new policy of selling Olympic tickets.

One month after BOCOG was forced to suspend the second round of ticket sales following a booking system meltdown because of unexpected high demand, Zhu Yan was introduced at a press conference on Friday as the replacement for Rong Jun as the director of the Olympic ticketing center.

Zhu, who previously worked for the Beijing municipal government, said that people would be restricted to eight tickets each instead of the previous 50 when ticket sales resume under a lottery system on December 10.

"Each person could apply for tickets for only two competition sessions, and only four tickets for each session," said Zhu.

"The new policy will give more people a chance to watch the games, and it will prevent ticket scalpers from making profits," he added.

Zhu didn't give the exact number of tickets available for the second phase but said the number would be no fewer than 1.8 million.

A total of seven million tickets for the August 8-24 Games are available to the general public with nearly three quarters reserved for domestic sales.

The first batch of 1.6 million tickets were allocated by lottery earlier this year.

(Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2007)