Prague, May 23 (CTK) - The number of tourists at Czech hotels grew by 5.5 percent in the first quarter to 2.4 million, but the number of foreigners among them dropped by 0.3 percent, the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) announced today.
The CSU explained the decline in number of foreign guests by the fact that Easter was in April this year.
On the other hand, the growth by 11.4 percent in the number of Czechs at Czech hotels was attributed by the CSU to the excellent skiing conditions in the first three months of this year.
Tourism analyst Jaromir Beranek attributed the decline in the number of foreign guests to Easter and a lower number of tourists from Britain who started to fly for cheap entertainment to cities, like Bratislava, Riga, Warsaw and Minsk. Foreign tourists' stays in the Czech Republic become more expensive because of a strong crown, said Beranek.
Tourist numbers are no surprise for the agency CzechTourism, as the first quarter results have always been lower, said spokeswoman Karin Seligova. At end-2006, CzechTourism puts the number of foreigners at 6.4-6.7 million, which would be a rise of 2-6 percent.
As usual, the target destination for most foreign tourists was Prague where 54.3 percent of foreigners were accommodated.
It was followed by the Kralovehradecky region and Karlovarsky region (8.3 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively).
Although the lowest number of guests (of all the regions of the Czech Republic) was reported from the Pardubicky region as in previous periods, the highest occupancy growth year-on-year (+29.2 percent) was seen there.
This can be explained by higher usage of the Pardubice Airport, which serves low-cost airlines, the CSU said.
By country of permanent residence, most tourists came from Germany, Great Britain (although the number of British guests decreased by 14.0 percent) and Italy.
In Q1 2006, overnight stays numbered 8 million, which was 1.5 percent up on Q1 2005.
However, for foreign guests (3.8 million overnight stays) a decrease by 1.2 percent year-on-year was reported, the CSU noted.
Net use of rooms at hotels and boarding houses was 36.2 percent in the Q1 2006.
The highest net use was reported, as in the previous year, by 5-star hotels (46.2 percent), even though there was a drop by 4.7 percentage points.
In the beginning of 2006, four new 5-star hotels were opened and two hotels of the category re-opened.
Other hotels and boarding houses reached only 33.3 percent of net use of rooms; however, it was 1 percentage point up year-on-year, according to the CSU data.