Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism in the Czech Republic

Our paper aims at scrutinizing and evaluating the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on international and domestic tourism in the Czech Republic. Our methodology includes the analysis of empirical and statistical data provided by the statistical agencies that stems from the systematic and holistic literature review. The empirical research includes analysis and comparison of time series of economic indicators. The paper evaluates two groups of statistical indicators. The first group consists of domestic and inbound tourism in the Czech Republic. The second area of research is the analysis of the hotel sector in the Prague region. The analysis of the hotel industry focuses on the development of the following internationally used economic indicators: average daily rate, occupancy, and revenue per available room. Our results reveal that there were significant effects of the coronavirus pandemic both on the inbound and the domestic tourism which brought about a plethora of social and economic implications such as the decrease in the average occupancy of hotel rooms or the revenues for the tourism and hospitality sector. As a result of the pandemic, the tourism structure in the Czech Republic has changed significantly with the institutions of tourism undegoing serious transformational and structural changes that might take lots of time to revert and to mitigate by the relevant tourism authorities, stakeholders, and policymakers.