Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural tourism in Czechia Preliminary considerations

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural tourism in Czechia. It points out that the catastrophic scenarios of the decline in tourism mainly concern urban destinations focused on foreign tourism. In contrast, rural destinations create an alternative. Some of them have even shown an increase in tourism in the 2020 summer season as compared to 2019. However, this new orientation requires investing in infrastructure, marketing and regional cooperation.

Highlights

• Paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural tourism in Czechia.

• The decline in tourism mainly affected destinations focused on foreign tourists.

• Czech countryside gained domestic tourists due to natural, gastronomic and local attractions.

• The specificity of COVID 19 new outbreaks is its local or regional limitation.

• The COVID-19 epidemy has created an opportunity for the development of rural tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural tourism
• COVID-19
• destination management
• South Moravia
• Czechia

Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870644, project SPOT (Social and innovative Platform On cultural Tourism and its potential towards deepening Europeanisation), https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/870644.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

CRediT author statement

Antonín Vaishar: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing, Original draft preparation, Investigation, Data curation.

Milada Šťastná: Supervision, Writing, Reviewing and Editing.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is supported by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870644, project SPOT (Social and innovative Platform On cultural Tourism and its potential towards deepening Europeanisation), https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/870644.