MICE CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE

This romantic and magical “City of a Hundred Spires” has for some time occupied one of the TOP 15 positions in the International Congress & Convention Association (ICCA) rankings. In 2017, it reached an impressive eighth position, and everything seems positive for the 2018 statistics, which ICCA will reveal by May. MICE tourism is expanding and so is Prague as a luxury tourism destination.

Prague is an attractive, romantic, and picturesque city with a typical central European charm, located in the heart of the continent. It is easily reachable, being within 2.5 hours of all major European hubs. The airport is located about 30 minutes from the city centre, and the traffic inside the city flows smoothly. In recent years, passenger numbers at Prague airport have grown continuously, and it is now adding new connections and routes.

The picturesque city on the Vltava River offers almost everything in walking distance. For your MICE events, it offers a large variety of hotels, from large congress and conference 4-star establishments to boutique hotels with soul, romantic luxury accommodations in heritage properties, a church, a post office, etc. where you can hold a specific and unforgettable meeting or have your incentive group.

The specificity and originality of venues in Prague offer great satisfaction for people that appreciate architecture, style, design, spirit, soul and intelligence, and sophisticated knowledge typical of Europe. More and more visitors are coming for events, and during their free time, they like to enjoy all these cultural strengths that the city can offer at the same time, like concerts, cafés, lively classical and jazz music in many places, paintings and museums and special cultural events.

Once they have spent time in Prague, many visitors enjoy coming back and stay in one of a plethora of 5-star hotels with great views, having dinners on terraces with views over the romantic Vltava and breathing in inspiration from centuries of history. Prague remains an inspiration for artists, writers, architects, philosophers, and poets.

Prague welcomes visitors from new destinations

If we look at statistics detailing where tourists to Prague arrive from, we can see that the range of countries continues to expand, with additions of new countries that a few years ago were not represented or were represented by a small number of visitors.

Based on Prague City Tourism statistics, there were about 7.9 million visitors to Prague in 2018, of which 6.67 million were foreign visitors. The average overnight stay remains 2.3 nights.

For 2018, in comparison with the previous year, the number of foreign tourists who stayed in public establishments from leading source markets like Germany, USA, the UK, Russia, and Italy remains similar to 2017, with notable increases in visitors from the UK (6%) and Italy (3%)

There was an increase of visitors from neighbouring countries Hungary and Poland, as well as huge increases from Ukraine and Lithuania. There are more and more visitors coming from Saudi Arabia (a 26.9% increase) and from the UAE (an 8.6% increase).

Among Asia, there was a significant increase in visitors coming from China, India, Japan, and Taiwan. In terms of numbers of people, the most significant growth was from Ukraine and China. There were 47.9% more visitors from Ukraine than in 2017.

National Museum gets a new coat

At the end of 2018, work on the National Museum building’s extensive reconstruction finished, and the establishment, located on the Vaclavske Namesti (Vaclav Square), was opened to the public with a new shiny “coat”. Before the reconstruction, the venue hosted various MICE events. Now you can once again organise events there.