The Czech Republic welcomed a record 10.6 million tourists in 2018

If you’ve started to notice things getting a little bit more cramped in Prague, well, you aren’t alone.

Tourism in the Czech Republic continues to soar at a record-breaking pace, and in 2018 the country welcomed more than half a million additional tourists compared to the previous year.

A total of 10.6 million foreign tourists visited the Czech Republic over the course of 2018, according to official stats released yesterday by the Czech Statistical Office.

The data is based on overnight stays in hotels and other accommodation facilities across the country. A total of 21.3 million guests stayed with accommodation providers in the Czech Republic last year, roughly have of which were domestic travelers.

The number of foreign tourists coming to the Czech Republic has now roughly equalled the country’s population, which is also approximately 10.6 million.

Germans represented the highest number of tourists to the Czech Republic at more than 2 million in 2018, or roughly 20% of the country’s total number of tourists.

Slovak (735,000), Polish (620,000), Chinese (620,000), and USA (556,000) guests rounded out the top 5 nationalities of tourists in the Czech Republic, followed by guests from Russia (545,000), UK (497,000), South Korea (416,000), Italy (410,000), and Austria (299,000).

Largely due to new flight routes being opened, the number of visitors from Asian countries has more than doubled over the past five years.

Prague was easily the most popular destination for foreign tourists, with 6.7 million visitors to the Czech capital over the course of 2018 (7.9 million including Czech residents).

The Jihomoravský region, which includes Brno, saw the second-most overnight stays in 2018 (over 2 million visitors, 685,000 of which were foreigners).

The total number of overnight stays in the Czech Republic represents a 6.4% increase over the previous year, and the first time in history the total number of stays in the country has exceeded 20 million.