Tourism - 1. quarter of 2007

In Q1 2007, a total of 2.3 million guests arrived at collective accommodation establishments; this was 1.9% up on Q1 2005. The number of foreign guests increased by +7.9%, the number of domestic guests, in contrast, dropped by -3.8%. The highest decrease was reported in winter sport resorts.Graph 1
In Q1 2007, a total of 2.3 million guest arrivals was recorded at collective accommodation establishments; this was 1.9% up on Q1 2006. There were 1.2 million foreign guests, i.e. +7.9% more than in 2006; domestic tourists totalled 1.1 million (-3.8%). A decrease in domestic guest arrivals was probably a result of exceptionally bad snow conditions.

The highest drop in number of tourists, both domestic (-18.0%) and foreign guests (-4.0%), was shown at other than hotels’ categories. In contrast, more guests arrived at four-stars and five-stars hotels (+16.3% and +11.0%, respectively). As well as in Q4 2006, there was the highest growth in guests’ arrivals at the regions representing city and spa tourism in Q1 2007. In Prague arrived 11.9% more guests, in Karlovarsky Region +10.3% and in Jihomoravsky Region +7.6%. There was the highest decrease, in contrast, in Liberecky, Kralovehradecky and Jihocesky Region (-13.6%, -8.6% and -7.7%, respectively).

In Q1 2007, overnight stays of guests reached 7.7 million, which was 1.0% down on Q1 2006. The lower number of overnight stays of residents (-8.1%) was not compensated by an increase in overnight stays of foreigners (+6.6%). An average number of overnight stays was 3.3 nights in Q1 2007, i.e. -0.1 nights year-on-year.

As for the country of permanent residence, most tourists, as usual, came from Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. In Top 10 placed the same countries as in Q1 2006, only a position of some countries changed. The highest growth in the number of guest arrivals was recorded by Russians (+29.1%), who pushed Slovaks and Poles one place down comparing with Q1 2006 (to fifth and sixth place, respectively). France due to the growth in number of tourists by +25.8% changed at the eight place United States. Lower number of tourists came from Great Britain (-8.7%) and USA (-6.5%).

Net use of rooms of hotels and boarding houses was 36.2% in the Q1 2007 (+0.3 percentage point year-on-year).

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Methodological note:
1) Data on guests at collective tourist accommodation establishments are obtained from the monthly CR1-12 sample survey and the quarterly CR2-04 survey. Data mentioned are sums of the data processed from submitted questionnaires and imputed data on the accommodation establishments that failed to report. Net use of room is the number of overnight stays in a particular period divided by the number of room-days (stated as a percentage).

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Contact: Hellerová Alena, phone: (+420) 274052921, E-mail: alena.hellerova@csu.gov.cz
Data source: CZSO direct survey in collective accommodation establishments
End of data collection: 6 April 2007
End of data processing: 14 May 2007
The data are preliminary; revised data for all quarters of 2007 will be known in March 2008.
Quarterly data since 2000 are available in time series ( /produkty/cru_ts ). As of 16 February 2007 data for 2006 were revised due to the questionnaires collected after the deadline.