The South Moravian Tourism Office has tapped into mobile operator data from 2023, which offers valuable insights into tourism patterns throughout the region. The data reveal that South Moravia consistently draws the largest number of tourists out of all the other Czech regions except Prague. However, visitors tend to spend the shortest amount of time here compared to other regions.
Mobile operator data offer slightly different outcomes than conventional statistics from mass accommodation facilities. “The data from mobile operators allow us to better capture the domestic source regions from which people travel to South Moravia,” said Martina Grůzová, the director of the Tourism Central Office for South Moravia (Centrála cestovního ruchu).
“In summer, South Moravia’s tourist influx surpasses 3.5 million. While domestic travellers predominate by a 9:1 ratio, international guests are also flocking from Poland, Slovakia, and Germany.”
Tourism Central Office
Mobile operator data can quantify the actual numbers of visitors in the region, revealing for example that only a quarter of visitors stay in mass accommodation facilities. “The transmitter evaluates the regularity and duration of a user’s movement in a given location. As a result, mobile data captures the real dynamics of user movement in the network. It is also able to distinguish between individual accommodation, non-commercial facilities, and trips associated with cottages and cabins,” explained Martin Šauer from the Department of Regional Economics at Masaryk University, who has long been involved in the project.
While records from mass accommodation facilities during the peak summer months counted just under 900,000 tourists in South Moravia, mobile data show that the true figures was over 3.5 million. In the third quarter of 2023, a total of 2.1 million guests checked into Prague’s mass accommodation facilities, according to the Czech Statistical Office.
As usual, domestic visitors outnumbered international ones in a ratio of 9:1. During the summer months, more than 350,000 tourists from abroad visited South Moravia, with tourists primarily coming from neighbouring countries such as Poland, Slovakia, and Germany.
Main attractions like the Moravian Karst and Brno have stable year-round visitor numbers, while Znojmo and Podyjí, as well as Pálava and the Lednice-Valtice area, saw a significant increase in visits during the summer and grape harvesting seasons, particularly in terms of the number of overnight stays in the area. “We are still processing the data for the last quarter of 2023. Nevertheless, we already see that wine tourism had a significant impact on the region’s visitor numbers in the third quarter, and we are curious to see how the Christmas visits to Brno will be reflected in the numbers for the last quarter,” said Grůzová.
In February, the data for the last quarter will be published by the Czech Statistical Office. With the help of complete mobile data for the year 2023, it will be possible to capture year-round visitor trends in South Moravia.
