Tourism down 10 percent last year

In 2009, more people stayed at home. Households looking to save money scrapped vacations, and businesses postponed or canceled expensive conferences abroad and limited business trips in an effort to cut costs. Both trends hit the hotel and travel industry hard in the Czech Republic - Prague especially, a city that depends a great deal economically on business travel and tourism.

The number of foreign tourists who visited the country was down 10 percent on the year, according to the latest estimates from Mag Consulting, a statistical and marketing company that works with government agencies. The Czech Statistical Office, which also tracks tourism, will release its figures for 2009 in February. For 2010, the Mag Consulting survey forecasted a further year-on-year drop of 5 percent, with parallel developments in related services industries such as hotels and restaurants.

Overnight stays by foreigners were down 11 percent on the year, and the number of overnight stays this year is expected to fall a further 6 percent.

While Mag Consulting head Jaromír Beránek attributed some of the drop to the recession affecting tourism, he added it was also "a general decrease in interest in the Czech Republic as a destination on foreign markets, which was already noticeable in 2008."

Recession aside, many hoteliers and travel agents have had a perennial criticism of the lack of marketing done by Prague City Hall to attract tourism.

Sales of businesses in the tourism sector dropped 9 percent to 135 billion Kč, and, as a result of that decrease, nearly 3,000 employees were laid off, according to the survey.

Czech airports also reflected the dip in traffic because of the crisis, with the capital's Ruzyně Airport registering a decrease of 8 percent in passenger traffic for the year. Ruzyně Airport's decrease is a steep one also due to the previous year's record traffic, but the airport may have seen the worst of it, as year-on-year declines were seen every month up until October. November and December showed increases against 2008, a trend the airport expects to continue.

"I believe passenger numbers will increase also in the months to come," Director of Ruzyně Airport Miroslav Dvořák said in an airport release.

On the revenue side, it appears tourism may have hit its bottom, as well. In the latest data available from the Czech National Bank (ČNB), revenue from foreign tourists was down 8 percent in the first half of 2009. But, taking the entire January-September period into account, the first three quarters, shows a decline of 7.6 percent.

"Results are better compared to H1," Beránek said in response to the ČNB data. "Certain signs of recovery can be seen."

Claire Compton can be reached at
ccompton@praguepost.com