Walt Disney, the United States entertainment company whose new theme park opens on Lantau in September, started taking reservations Tuesday for the resort's two new hotels, and the asking price is half the tariff charged at the company's swankiest hotel at its Walt Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida.

Rooms at the luxury Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel, a Victorian-themed resort with 400 rooms, will start at HK$1,600 per night, while the starting rate at the art deco-style Disney's Hollywood Hotel will be HK$1,000.

A room at the Grand Floridian Hotel in Walt Disney World, by contrast, starts at US$394 (HK$3,073) per night, while rooms in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel in Anaheim, California, start at US$265 per night.

The relative bargains are, in some measure, Disney's own fault.

There has been a boom in hotel construction and conversions that will add 23 new hotels, including Hong Kong Disneyland's, to the SAR's existing 100 this year.

And much of the increase, says a hotel association executive, can be traced back to Disney's arrival.

Disney executives said they do not think their two hotels will seriously cut into the business of their competitors.

``I don't believe there will be an impact on the local industry,'' said Peter Lowe, general manager of hotel operations for Disneyland in Hong Kong, who was previously general manager at the Mandarin Oriental in the territory.

He predicted Disneyland's arrival would be a boon for the SAR's hotel trade, since the resort cannot begin to accommodate the 5.6 million visitors Disney has estimated will visit the theme park in its first year.

The two new hotels will only add 1,000 rooms - less than half the 2,100 Disney ultimately plans to build - to a total of 37,934 hotel rooms in Hong Kong as of last September, according to statistics from the Tourism Board.

``These hotels do not have a comparable equivalent in Hong Kong because there is practically no other hotel here that has a big piece of land,'' said James Lu, executive director of the Hong Kong Hotels Association, referring to the sprawling lawns and gardens that will surround Disney's hotels on Lantau.

Following the Sars outbreak in 2003, tourists have returned to the territory, with 21.8 million arrivals last year, up more than 30 percent from the year before, according to the Tourism Board.

Grace Lam contributed to this article.

nicholas.zamiska@globalchina.com ann.collier@globalchina.com