Guests at Collective Tourist Accommodation Establishments - Detailed Results

Resulting data broken down by arrivals and overnight stays by country of origin of tourists can be influenced year-on-year, among others, by a change of methodology of the statistical survey (last year a sample survey, this year for the entire population). Concrete establishments that were in the sample last year could have been focused on an extraordinary or special clientele, however, for estimations they were used as a representative of a certain (determined by a sample method) number of "homogeneous" accommodation establishments. This "making of average" should be excluded at a survey of population, however, it is partially brought into results by estimation of data for non-responding enterprises. Nevertheless, number of enterprises responding this year is highly prevailing over the response of last year and thus the estimated results are much closer to reality than ever before.

The survey results are still negatively affected by the state of the Register of Accommodation Establishments (RUBYT) that has not yet been connected to any administrative source of information that would provide automatic updating. The survey produces information only on the reduction of accommodation establishments and not on their increase. This was one of the reasons why the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) made a census of accommodation establishments in 2001. Moreover, a system of updating the Register is under preparation - it will enable updating of RUBYT on the basis of information from the Business Register. Elimination of duplicities is now being completed (many accommodation establishments when their operator changed did change also their name without announcing the fact to the CZSO) as well as adding of accommodation establishments found out by the census to the database for all those years during which they served to tourism. Further, entities newly included in the Business Register with the activity of accommodation are addressed and asked whether they do their business in the area of tourism. All these activities should be finished until the end of this year, the latter will continue, namely three times a year. Resulting from that should be RUBYT of much better quality and thus also better information on guests in collective accommodation establishments.

The numbers of accommodation establishments (state indicator) were given in the annual publication "Capacity of Tourism Accommodation Establishments" and represent the state in the RUBYT Register on 31 July 2002 as described above.

Guests in an accommodation establishment are persons (including children) who used the services of the accommodation establishment for their temporary stay. Persons (Czech nationals and foreigners) who used accommodation establishment services for temporary stay for the purpose of employment are not included. The length of temporary stay does not exceed 1 year for the visitor (guest) to be taken as a tourist.

Gross use of bed places is arrived at by using the total of permanent bed places. Net use of bed places refers to the use of permanent beds actually available to guests. Similarly, net use of rooms relies on the rooms actually available to guests.

This publication will be issued in the following months: July, October 2003 and January, April 2004.