Holiday World Travel Fair starts its second decade

Do you believe that the whole world can easily fit on just 10.000 m2? Yes, this year's Holiday World Travel Fair, the largest of its kind in Central Europe, has begun in Prague, with over 800 exhibitors from 68 countries. On Thursday, Pavla Horakova visited the fair and travelled round the world in 80 minutes...

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For the eleventh time already, the Exhibition Grounds in Prague 7 are hosting the annual Holiday World Travel Fair. A part of the fair, called Region World, is dedicated to the promotion of Czech regions which are trying to attract not only Czech tourists, but also visitors from abroad. This year's partner country of the Holiday World is Slovakia and some countries are presenting themselves for the first time this year, such as Serbia, Luxembourg, Ireland, Morocco, Chile and Nepal. Miroslav Ehl is the general secretary of the Association of Tour Operators and Travel Agents of the Czech Republic. He told me how the habits of Czech tourists and their favourite destinations have changed after the Iron Curtain fell and what the situation was before.

"At that time, it wasn't a time of choice. Czechs could travel to Bulgaria, Romania, Balaton Lake in Hungary. But the situation changed after 1989 and now we are talking about the choices. But before it was possibility. Shortly after 1989, people were eager to travel and they were ready to accept anything for low prices. Now they became more experienced, more demanding and the trend is that people tend to travel by air more and more instead of by buses. But obviously, there is a certain segment of the market, which still uses bus transportation or private transportation, private cars. But the number of people travelling by air is increasing every year. For a number of years, Czech clients prefer four destinations: Croatia, Italy, Spain and Greece. This preference is not changing dramatically and you may see, year by year, only slight changes between them. I don't have the exact figures but I think the best year for outgoing tourism was 1998. Since then we notice the same level or slightly decreased number of tourists, but the spending is more and more because of high quality of travel."