For the capital city of Prague; the issue in tourism is not the "threat of Airbnb" but the lack of top-level conferences and sporting events.
This is according to an interview in Euro magazine with Gorjan Lazarov; head of the largest Czech hotel chain; Orea. He says that Prague has enormous potential – after all; the Congress Center is only a few minutes from the underground station and the whole city is a fantastic tourist attraction.
But we are a bit "lazy" – the hotelier asks some quite interesting questions: for example; why is the renovation of the Congress Center taking so long; why don't we have any top-level tennis tournaments in the capital; and why don't we push harder for people to spend more money here as part of congress tourism?
There is definitely room for improvement. Gorjan Lazarov offers a comparison with Milan; where every trade fair means a major focus on making money for the entire industry. Not to mention that Prague hotels have high occupancy rates but disproportionately low prices – this also calls for price increases; but we are caught in a vicious circle when the city does not offer enough attractive opportunities for the development of the hotel industry.
The industry is growing; according to data from the Czech Statistical Office; 5.9% more people stayed overnight in the Czech Republic in the summer season from July to September than last year. There are 227;000 people working in tourism in Czechia; with roughly one-sixth of them working in hotels alone.
This is one of the reasons why Orea; which also has its own franchise concept; is planning to invest around half a billion Czech korunas in the construction of new hotels and the renovation of existing ones over the next four years.
According to Lazar; the demonised sharing economy service Airbnb is not cannibalising the hotel industry; but rather helping hoteliers to think more about their own business. Case studies by Expense Reduction Analysts show that there is considerable scope for more economically efficient operations in this segment and thus also resources for further development.
