The Czechia has not resumed issuing tourist visas to citizens of China, which, like other European countries, stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic in January. The number of flights between Europe and the world’s most populous country is now minimal. This was stated by the director of the state agency CzechTourism Jan Herget in response to a warning from the Chinese Ministry of Tourism about trips to the Czech Republic due to the worsened epidemiological situation.
According to data from the Czech Statistical Office (CSO), approximately 36,500 Chinese visitors stayed in domestic accommodation establishments in the first half of this year. Compared to the same period last year, it is about a quarter of a million less.
The China Ministry reported on the Chinese Ministry’s announcement on its website. The South China Morning Post noted that Beijing justified Friday’s warnings about travel to the Czech Republic by an increase in coronavirus infections, but the warning followed tensions between the two countries over Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s trip to Taiwan. Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and opposes any official trips by foreign politicians to the island. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang I warned, among other things, that he pushed for a high price for violating the principle of one China.
Last year, according to the CZSO, about 610,000 Chinese travelers stayed in the Czech Republic, spending an average of 1.5 nights there. According to a report in the tourdata of the CzechTourism Institute of Tourism, half of Chinese tourists went to Prague, about a quarter chose the South Bohemian Region for their stay.
Group tours make up three quarters of Chinese visitors to the Czech Republic, the report states. The expenditure of one Chinese guest in the Czech Republic per day is around 1,300 crowns, similarly to visitors from Japan or the United States. A tourist from South Korea in the Czech Republic spends approximately 200 crowns more per day.
“CzechTourism continues to promote the regions of the Czech Republic on the Chinese market, for example in the form of video blogs or online destination training for Chinese travel agencies. We hope that the situation around coronavirus will stabilize as soon as possible and tourism from China resumes,” said Herget.
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