Tourism in Prague is Almost Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels

By Sarah Buser, Jessica Foshee, Ellie Millikan

In Prague, the number of tourists rises every year. Local business owners and the tourist office predict this summer to be exceptional in terms of the number of visitors.

Summer is in full swing, and more and more tourists are coming to the city. The number of tourists has reached 80 percent of the pre-pandemic level, says Barbora Scherf, spokeswoman for Prague City Tourism. Tourists from Asian countries have also returned.

Almost six million tourists came to Prague in 2022, and this year, it is likely that even more visitors will arrive in the city with cobblestone streets.

The tourists are catching up. Michal Dziendziura confirms what the statistics show. He works as a tour guide in Prague and is the owner of Prague Free Tour Company. He started his business eight years ago, and through the years he has seen tourism grow. His business project has been a great success, and now his tours attract about 40,000 people every year.

Since he started to work as a tour guide in 2015, every year, the effective number of tourists visiting Prague has been higher than the predictions, apart from the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, Dziendziura says.

(Photo shows: Michal Dziendziura is (third from the right) and his team of tour guides)

This is good for his business. He is convinced that this summer more tourists than in pre- pandemic years will be visiting the city. “We basically have lost two years of life sitting in our country,” he says. So, people are catching up on traveling.

At the Globe Bookstore and Café, tourism is important when it comes to business. Sabrina Sito is the manager of the café, which attracts tourists from all over the world, because it is listed in the Lonely Planet travel book. She says that at the moment it still is not the peak of tourism season, but she expects a lot of tourists to come to her café in mid July and August.

Martina from Milan sits on a wooden table in the Manifesto Market, a place highly frequented by tourists. With her boyfriend, she travels to several cities in Eastern Europe with an interrail pass. “Because of Covid, I haven’t traveled for two years.”

She is so glad things are finally back to normal.