Prague - The tourist season is in full swing but hoteliers are far from being happy. Due to the global recession, they face the worst crisis ever. The foreign travel arrivals have dropped robustly, which resulted in lowest hotel occupancy rates in years.
"Especially German tourists have stopped coming. [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel has been promoting domestic tourism and Germans have been travelling more around their own country," Accor Hotel's business manager Marek Audes said.
"But we have noted a drop of tourists from other countries as well. My estimation of the drop-off is about 20 to 30 percent," he added.
Outflow of Germans
The Accor Hotels firm is an owner of 3-star hotel network called Ibis. There are four Ibis hotels in Prague with the fifth to be opened in August this year in Pilsen.
"The outflow of German tourists worries us because Pilsen is so near the German borders," Audes said.
Nonetheless, Prague 3-star and 4-star hotels have been hit hardest. Attracting the biggest numbers of tourists from all over the world, these hotels report the lowest occupancy rates in years.
To lure tourists from abroad they often offer special deals.
"We (Ibis hotels) are offering special rates when a reservation is done twenty to thirty days in advance," Audes said.
Prague luxury hotels have a bit higher occupancy, since they attract a different clientele. But the situation is far from being ideal.
"We can really say that people decide to go on holiday in the last minute. The time between the reservation and arrival gets shorter and shorter," 5-star Sheraton Hotel business director Jan Korta said.
"But we have signals it should get better in September or October," he added optimistically.
But according to the Czech Statistical Office figures, the tourism industry has not suffered as much as the hoteliers say. From January to May tourism-linked industry revenues have dropped by 13.3 percent.
"Based on the figures in the first five months this year, we expect the hoteliers revenues will drop by 11 - 14 percent, in Prague by 16 to 19 percent," Mag company analyst Jaromír Beránek alleged. He noted that Prague has 120,000 beds for tourists, including university dorms, hostels and 26 camps.
"It is the camps that have reported the biggest drop in revenues," Beránek said, adding that it will be also small-scale hotels that will pay the price for the economic downturn. They are not linked to international reservation systems, lacking the financial background.
"The crisis will eliminate the "unnecassary" elements in the tourism industry. Why should tourists, for example, pay travel agents for color leaflets when they can download them for free from internet?" Beránek said.
Recovery is a long way off for the tourism industry but the Czech hoteliers are lucky to have been spared the influenza panic, which has hit travel industry in other countries worldwide.
