Brno, Feb 15 (BD) – According to the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO), over 20 million people registered at tourist accommodations in the Czech Republic in 2017. This figure, which includes both domestic and international tourists, represents an increase of 9.1% compared with the previous year.
České noviny (Czech News, Feb. 8,2018) reports that while every region of the Czech Republic experienced an increase in tourism last year, the largest increase was in South Moravia, which witnessed a 14.6 percent spike in the number of visitors compared with 2016.
Of these 20.1 million tourists nationwide, roughly half (10.2 million) were visiting from abroad, with the Germans (1.95 million), Slovaks (688,000) and Poles (578,000) being the most numerous.
Russian tourism to the Czech Republic increased by 35.3 percent from the previous year, making them the fourth most numerous nationality to visit.
There was also a large increase in tourism from East Asian nations such as China, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Miroslav Linhart, a partner at Deloitte Czech Republic in Prague, expects this trend to continue in the years to come.
“In terms of economic benefits, improving the tourism infrastructure is more important than increasing the raw numbers of tourists, as better infrastructure will result in wealthier tourists and longer stays,” České noviny quoted Linhart as saying.
According to Radio Praha (Feb. 8,2018), these figures do not include numbers from online hospitality services such as Airbnb, so the actual number of tourists in 2017 was likely much more than reported in this CZSO report.
