Shanghai's neighboring cities could help ease the strain of accommodating the high number of people expected to take advantage of the upcoming three-day-long Dragon Boat Festival to visit the World Expo 2010, an Expo booking partner has said.

All budget and three-star hotels in Shanghai have been booked up for the holiday period, while only 5 percent of hotels over three-stars have space, according to an announcement by Expo online hotel booking partner HUS on Monday. The situation has prompted the company to look to hotels in cities near Shanghai to meet demand.

"The remaining hotels available in Shanghai are mainly five-star, with room prices ranging from around 1,000 yuan ($146.2) to over 4,000 yuan ($586.5) per night," Chen Yi, the PR manager at HUS, told the Global Times Tuesday.

"In order to meet demand, we have begun offering hotels in Suzhou, Kunshan and Taicang, which are within an hour's drive of downtown Shanghai," he said. "Hotel room prices in such cities average around 200 yuan ($29.3) per night."

However, Zhu Liang, deputy manager for domestic travel at Shanghai Travel Agency, said that his company had no plans to offer such packages, as the extra distances involved will be a concern for many customers.

"Our tour groups normally set off from their hotels at 7 to 8 am," said Zhu. "If the hotel were in Suzhou, we would probably run into morning rush hour traffic in Shanghai. Plus, as we won't leave the Expo site until after 9 or 10 pm, staying outside of the city would mean we get back to our hotels too late."

Most of the travel agencies that Global Times reached Tuesday said they had already booked enough rooms in Shanghai for their customers.

Independent travelers could also find themselves looking outside the city for accommodation when visiting the Expo, although to many it will be a last resort. "The hotels in the cities around Shanghai definitely won't be my first choice, unless only rooms that cost over 1,000 yuan ($146.2) remain, which is more expensive than my air tickets," Zhou Wei, a resident from Heilongjiang Province who plans to come to Shanghai during the Dragon Boat Festival, said.