Czech accommodation facilities enjoyed record tourist numbers in 2017
Czech hotels, guesthouses and camp sites registered a record 20.1 million tourists last year, according to the Czech Statistics Office. The number of foreign visitors was 10.2 million, which is almost equivalent to the entire population of the Czech Republic.
Also up was the total number of nights spent of paid accommodation, which exceeded the 50-million mark for the first time ever.
Of the 20.1 million guests at Czech hotels, guesthouses and camp sites, 10.2 million came from abroad and the remaining 9.9 million were Czech-based.
The uptick is expected to continue this year, with Czech hoteliers again likely to experience record bookings, the director of Slevomat, Marie Havlíčková, told iHned.cz. She said this was in part due to the healthy state of the Czech economy in general.
Slevomat was the country’s biggest operator in Czech tourism industry last year, selling a total of 277,000 trips and stays.
Four-star hotels were the category that drew the highest number of guests in 2017 with 1.6 million, a rise of 8.3 percent on two years ago. Three-star hotels and “pensions” both saw their bookings expand by 7.4 percent.
Germans made up the biggest group of foreign users of Czech traditional accommodation services (which does not include the likes of Airbnb), with 1.95 million. Next were Slovaks with almost 700,000 and Poles with almost 600,000.
Russians, meanwhile, have begun returning to the Czech Republic after a falloff, according to the new Czech Statistics Office figures. Last year some 551,000 stayed at Czech accommodation facilities, a jump of more than one-third year-on-year.
Visitors from Asia also increased, particularly from China, to which there have been direct flights from Prague for three years. The number of Chinese guests staying in the Czech Republic was one-quarter higher last year than in 2016.
The total number of nights spent in accommodation facilities was 53.3 million, some 3.6 million more than the previous year.
All of the Czech Republic’s regions saw both visitor and nights spent numbers grow in 2017. The biggest winner in this regard was the South Moravian Region, which saw 14.6 more guests and 14.9 more nights spent.
The Plzeň, Ústí nad Labem, Karlovy Vary and Moravian Silesian regions all recorded jumps of at least 10 percent in the case of both indicators.
