According to the data of the Prague Information Service (Prague City Tourism – PIS, PCT), there were 120 thousand of them. Russians, Germans, Italians and the British were the most numerous.
Record was also broken at the Old Town Hall visited by 30 thousand visitors at Christmas and during the first week in January.
At the end of the year 2013 and the beginning of the year 2014, some 200 thousand tourists came to the Czech Republic. Prague was the destination for two thirds of them. The first place goes to Russians with approximately 65 thousand. “This result was largely influenced by the favourable exchange rate of the Czech Crown. An important number of clients in Prague hotels, restaurants and shops came from Russia,” said Nora Dolanská, Director of PIS-PCT.
Prague is one of the most popular European destinations with regard to the numbers of tourists on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. This is not only thanks to its history, monuments, romantic atmosphere, Czech cuisine, quality of hotels and good prices, but also thanks to much better quality of Christmas markets in the Old Town and Wenceslas squares in contrast with previous years,” said the Secretary of the Association of Czech Travel Agencies (AČCKA) Kateřina Petříčková.
“Russian tourists stay in the CR the longest, as some of them celebrate orthodox Christmas here, which falls on 6th and 7th Jauary,“ said the Tourism analyst Jaromír Beránek from Mag Consulting. This is also obvious from the number of 148 extra Czech Airlines flights to various destinations in Russia. Due to capacity reasons, Pardubice Airport had to refuse over 50 flights that Russian carriers wanted to realize.
Over the last few months, the city has received a number of valuable ratings: Prague has again ranked among TOP 10 MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index 2013, CNN ranked Prague first out of ten most beautiful cities for a winter holiday and according to Google, Prague is the 11th most photographed city in the world.
Foto: Oskar Exner
