Prague sees boom in luxury hotels

Posted on 2008-Mar-27 at 08:16 - Post Comment

More and more people are checking into the Czech Republic’s four and five star hotels. Last year, the number of people holidaying in the lap of luxury in this country increased by over ten per cent to nearly 3.5 million. To respond to the surge in demand, tens of new and deluxe high-end hotels are planned. Prague alone can expect nearly 20 of them in the next couple of years.

By the words of Erik Štadler supervisor of newly-opened four-star Hotel Arcada, hotels in Prague were pretty unoccupied the last couple of weeks in January, but we are starting again now in March. It’s coming, because it is not high season yet and accommodation is cheaper at this time of year. Also they get students and young people who also prefer four-star hotels, but who want to pay less. 

According to Tomio Okamura, the head of the Association of Czech Travel Agencies, the problem with the Czech structure of accommodation is that there are too many lower-category hotels, and hotel owners still have shortages of deluxe accommodation. There is a historical reason for this – Czech citizens were not too rich in the past. But now days their income is getting higher and higher.

In 2006 some 43,000 Czech tourists stayed in five star hotels in Prague, and last year, it was already more than 60,000. That was nearly a 50 percent increase in the space of one year.”

To meet the demand, nearly 20 new top-end hotels are planned for Prague in the next two years. One of the big problems is that in the Czech Republic all tourists are concentrated in the capital Prague. The reason for this is that in the Czech regions there is a very big shortage of four-star, international-standard, hotels. And there is a shortage of big Prague hotel – meaning hotels which have over 100 rooms each. Because it is only in such cases that big travel agencies can put such hotels in their brochures and offer them to their clients. With small accommodation, it is a problem – big travel agents can’t offer such accommodation, and therefore the Czech countryside, to their clients.”

Mr. Okamura thinks that tapping into European Union subsidies is the only way to encourage growth in the tourism industry outside of Prague. Until then, more and more people look set to check into the capital’s high-end hotels, but it is unlikely they will check out the regions, and all that they have to offer.