Prague, Dec 12 (ČTK) — The number of foreign tourists visiting the Czech Republic this year will grow by 2.5 percent year-on-year to a record 8 million, according to estimates released by agency CzechTourism and consulting company Mag Consulting.

“We expect that the level of eight million tourists will be exceeded for the first time this year,” CzechTourism’s director Jan Herget said.

However, the pace of the growth of tourism is slowing down.

“The number of overnight stays at accommodation facilities will stay at the same level as in 2013 this year,” tourism analyst Jaromír Beránek said.

The number of Russian tourists arriving in the Czech Republic will drop by between 80,000 and 85,000 this year. But the decrease will be fully compensated by arrivals of tourists from other countries, above all from Germany, Slovakia and the United Kingdom, according to Beránek.

The composition of the first top 10 nationalities of arriving tourists changed in the past years.

Austria replaced Spain, for example, which is no longer among the top ten nationalities. The only overseas market in the top ten is the US.

“But tourists from China already rank 11th and their numbers are increasing very rapidly, just like the numbers of South Korean tourists. So we can expect they will make it to the top ten in the coming years,” Herget said.

According to data released by the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ), the fastest growth was recorded for the number of tourists from India (+25 pct), China (+22 pct) and South Korea (+20.2 pct).

Unlike Russian tourists, who spend five nights on average in the Czech Republic, these tourists from more distant countries stay only two nights here,” Beránek said.

Tourists’ expenditures in the Czech Republic in the summer this year were 1.5 biilion Kč higher than last year.

The Czech Republic’s income from incoming tourism reached 36.4 billion Kč in the third quarter of 2014, according to statistics of the balance of payments, released by the Czech National Bank (ČNB) today.

In January-September 2014, foreign tourists spent a total of 103.6 billion Kč in the Czech Republic, a year-on-year increase of 2 percent.

An increasing number of arrivals of tourists from European countries near the Czech Republic is behind the good results of the balance of payments in tourism, CzechTourism said.

Source: http://praguepost.com/travel2/43250-new-record-for-tourism