Tourism - 3. quarter of 2007

In Q3 2007, a total of 4.6 million guests arrived at collective accommodation establishments; this was 0.2% down on Q3 2006. The number of overnight stays decreased markedly by 5.7% of which foreign tourists by 2.8% and domestic tourists even by 7.8%.Graph 1
In Q3 2007, a total of 4.6 million guest arrivals was recorded at collective accommodation establishments; this was 0.2% down on Q3 2006, but compared to the summer seasons in the past years it was the second highest result in past eight years. There were less foreign (2.2 million) than domestic guests (2.4 million) in Q3 2007 like in the past years. Year-on-year decrease by 0.2% was shown for both domestic and foreign tourists.

The highest number of tourists – 1.1 million (i.e. 23.8% of guests total) – was reported, as usual, at category three-stars hotels. The highest growth in guest arrivals (+8.9%) was recorded at four-stars hotels particularly due to foreign tourists who in contrast left campsites; there was a decrease by 29.4% on Q3 2006 in this category.

The highest number of guests among the NUTS 3 regions was shown in Capital Prague (1.3 million) and Jihočeský Region (511 thousand) in spite of the fact that Jihočeský Region recorded the highest decrease in occupancy of all the Regions (-13.2%). In contrast Jihomoravský Region, which was at the third place in terms of occupancy, had shown the highest increase (+14.4%). The number of guests went up by 2.8% in Capital Prague compared to Q3 2006.

From the beginning of the year the number of guest at collective accommodation establishments increased by 1.1% year-on-year particularly due to nonresidents whose number went up by 2.2% compared to the same period of the last year; the number of domestic guests stagnated.
In Q3 2007, overnight stays of guests, which is for the economy of accommodation establishments more important than the number of guests, reached 15.4 million; this was 5.7% down on Q3 2006. The number of overnight stays of foreigners went down by 2.8% and overnight stays of foreigners decreased by 7.8%. An average number of overnight stays of residents decreased from 3.6 to 3.4 days.

As for the country of permanent residence, there were the same countries in Top10 as in Q3 2006 measured by number of guests and number of overnight stays as well. Nevertheless, a position of countries changed. Most tourists came from Germany; this was followed by United Kingdom, Italy, USA and The Netherlands. All of these countries showed a decrease in Q3 2007 compared to Q3 2006, in case of The Netherlands there was the highest decrease in both the number of guests and overnight stays (-23.2% and -21.7%, respectively).

As for tourism regions, most guests arrived, apart from above mentioned Prague, South Moravia (560 thousand), North Moravia and Silesia (333 thousand), The Bohemian Forest – Sumava (320 thousand) and Southern Bohemia (298 thousand).

At spa accommodation establishments were recorded 180 thousand guests (+5.8%) in Q3 2007 of which 84 thousand were nonresidents (-0.8%). Most guests came to Karlovarsky Region (103 thousand) of which tree quarters were nonresidents.

Net use of rooms of hotels and boarding houses was 51.7% in Q3 2007 (+2.2 percentage point year-on-year). The highest net use was reported by five-stars hotels (71.9%) and four-stars hotels (65.0%). Other hotels and boarding houses reached 46.1% of net use of rooms. As for the NUTS 3 regions the highest net use of rooms was reported in Prague (69.0%) and Karlovarský Region (61.3%); in contrast the lowest net use of rooms was in Ústecký (33.6%) and Liberecký Region (36.3%).

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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).

Text not edited for language.

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: 8 October 2007
End of data processing: 8 November 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 ).