The pandemic deprived Czech tourism of almost 11 million guests

Last year, 10.8 million people stayed in the Czech Republic. This is 51% less than in the previous year. In absolute numbers, hotels, boarding houses and other accommodation establishments had 11.2 million fewer guests than a year ago. This follows from data on tourism, which was published by the Czech Statistical Office on Tuesday. After a disastrous second quarter and a relatively decent third quarter, tourism has been hit by new anti-pandemic restrictions in the last three months of last year. According to the CZSO, whose data was referenced by the novinky.cz server, in the 4th quarter the number of guests of accommodation establishments fell by 85.9% to 663,000. The number of domestic tourists fell by 73.3% and foreign tourists were up to 96% less than a year ago. Of the individual regions, the most significant drop in the 4th quarter was recorded in Prague. 92.9% fewer guests came to the Czech capital than in the last quarter of 2019. The number of overnight stays in Prague fell by 93.2%. Although the decline in tourists for the whole year was "only" 51%, in the case of foreigners the decline was significantly more pronounced. 74.4% less came to the Czech Republic than in 2019. In absolute numbers, the number of foreign tourists fell by 8.1 million last year compared to 2019. The number of Czech guests decreased by 28%. Most tourists came to the Czech Republic last year from Germany. However, as a result of the pandemic and related measures, their number decreased by 60.6% to 819,000. In second place are Poles, of whom 287,000 came to the Czech Republic, which means a year-on-year decrease of 57.3%. The number of Slovak tourists fell by 63.4% to 274,000.