The decrease is mainly due to lower categories of hotels and guesthouses. The worst performers were the guesthouses, which canceled two thousand beds. However, larger and more luxurious hotels are also reducing their offer. Unlike guesthouses, they do not completely close, but reduce the number of rooms and remove beds. “Annual room utilization is around 40 percent. From an economic point of view, it is therefore better for accommodation facilities to cancel several rooms than to subsidize vacancies that guests do not occupy, “said Roman Mikula from the CZSO. According to him, hoteliers are also gradually transforming multi-bed rooms into more popular double or single rooms.

However, the situation varies from region to region. Three popular tourist areas are worth attention, Prague, southern Bohemia and Olomouc. These partly deviate from the generally declining trend. In the Olomouc Region, as the only region, there were more dormitories, rooms and beds last year. But there is an apparent paradox in Prague and southern Bohemia: more and more hotels, but more and less beds. Large hotels do not close here, but limit capacity and rebuild rooms.

“Hotels have become significantly cheaper during the crisis and now they are unable to return the price to its original level. The team is pushing guesthouses away from the market, “said Jaromír Beránek about the trends of Mag Consulting analysts. According to him, especially in large cities, it is relatively easy to convert a little or a boarding house into another operation, such as long-term rental of apartments or offices.

After changing the methodology, the CZSO has comparable data for only two years so far. According to Mikula, however, the trend of reducing capacity is longer-term. For example, in Prague statistics record over 90,000 beds, which is significantly more than in comparable Vienna. There are 68,000 beds available to tourists and occupancy exceeds 70 percent. It is not even 60% in Prague.

Czech tourists are returning to a domestic holiday