“Feel Free”: Inside Czechia’s Tourism Boom and the Strategy Redefining a European Destination | News
In Prague this spring, the mood around tourism is no longer one of relief. It is one of ambition.
For years, Czechia was one of Europe’s most recognisable city-break destinations: beautiful, affordable, easy to sell. But the story now unfolding is more deliberate than that. The country is not simply enjoying a post-pandemic rebound. It is trying to reshape its tourism economy into something smarter, more premium and more strategically managed — and it is using hard data, targeted marketing and a stronger national policy framework to do it.
The numbers tell the first part of the story. In 2025, Czechia recorded almost 60 million overnight stays and more than 23.5 million arrivals, both above pre-pandemic levels and high enough to suggest that the recovery phase is over. The sector has entered a new cycle of expansion, while the average length of stay has remained broadly stable, a sign that this is not just a spike in fleeting demand but a more durable return of both domestic and international travel.
That growth matters far beyond hotel lobbies and airport arrivals halls. Tourism now accounts for 2.5 per cent of Czechia’s GDP, according to the Ministry of Regional Development, and in 2024 it generated 180 billion CZK in gross value added, 364 billion CZK in overall visitor spending and more than 233,000 jobs. The government’s presentation makes clear that officials increasingly see tourism not as a side industry but as a strategic economic sector with implications for regional development, tax revenue and national competitiveness.
But the most interesting shift is not the scale of the rebound. It is the kind of tourism Czechia now wants.
Prague, still the engine of the national visitor economy, offers the clearest picture of that change. The city’s destination data shows 8.27 million incoming visitors in 2025 and nearly 19 million overnight stays, with domestic tourism also rising steadily above pre-pandemic levels. Yet beneath those headline figures is a subtler and more revealing trend: visitor value is climbing. Average spending in 2025 is reported to be 55 per cent higher than in 2019, and roughly two-thirds of tourists are now staying in four- and five-star hotels. In the luxury segment, occupancy is materially above 2023 levels, pointing to a city that is no longer content to compete on affordability alone.
That helps explain why Czechia’s tourism leaders are talking less about pure volume and more about positioning. The destination that once leaned heavily on its image as a bargain European capital is now trying to present itself as a place of culture, gastronomy, wellness and premium experience. The change is visible not only in who is coming, but in how the country is choosing to market itself.
At the centre of that effort is CzechTourism’s new international campaign, “Feel Free,” which is less a slogan than a signal of how the country wants to be perceived. Rather than relying on generic destination advertising, the 2026 campaign has been designed as a layered system of brand storytelling, performance marketing and product-specific activation. CzechTourism says the image campaign will run from April to June 2026 across the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands, backed by an investment of 17.5 million CZK. The emphasis is on emotional, cinematic branding — longer 30-second spots, culture and gastronomy-led narratives and, notably, the introduction of connected TV and video-on-demand placements, especially in Italy.
That move matters because it shows Czechia is marketing itself less like a discount break and more like a premium lifestyle destination. Connected TV and VOD inventory are not simply media channels; they are also signals of audience ambition. They imply longer attention spans, stronger creative storytelling and a willingness to spend for brand effect rather than chase only the cheapest click. In other words, Czechia is trying to buy not just reach, but perception.
The architecture of the campaign is also unusually disciplined. More distant markets are being approached with image-building and brand narrative. Closer markets, by contrast, are being targeted through narrower product and conversion campaigns designed to move people closer to booking. CzechTourism’s plan allocates a further 4.3 million CZK to search and content PPC campaigns running from February to December 2026 in markets such as Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Then comes another 8 million CZK, including VAT, for conversion campaigns in the United States, Germany and Poland in September and October.
What emerges is a two-speed model. In long-haul markets, Czechia is building desire. In nearer ones, it is converting familiarity into trips. That split is one of the clearest signs that the destination has matured in how it thinks about demand. Not every country needs the same message, and not every traveller is at the same point in the decision funnel.
The campaign calendar deepens that sense of precision. CzechTourism’s 2026 plan stages tourism products by season and by market, with image, gastronomy, culture, walking and cycling clustered earlier in the year, golf entering in late spring and summer, spas pushed into autumn and winter products reserved for the year’s final stretch. Instead of promoting “Czechia” as one undifferentiated offer, the strategy breaks the destination into product lines tailored to specific audience needs. Golf is aimed at the UK and Scandinavia in August. Spa tourism is directed at Germany and Poland in September. Winter sports are pushed into Germany, Poland and the Netherlands in November.
That product segmentation says something larger about the country’s ambitions. Czechia is trying to become less dependent on the classic Prague weekend and more resilient as a year-round destination. It is also trying to spread demand more effectively. While Prague remains dominant, the official presentations repeatedly stress regional development, destination management and themed travel beyond the capital. Study tours for buyers and journalists at Czechia Travel Trade Day 2026 were built around six themed regional programmes, ranging from gastronomy in Olomouc and Pilsen to heritage in Pardubice and wellness in Vysočina.
In that sense, the marketing campaign is not just selling a country abroad. It is reinforcing a domestic policy objective: to redistribute tourism more intelligently and build stronger regional tourism economies. The ministry says 85 million CZK has been allocated to regional destination management organisations, alongside support for direct flights and regional airport development linked to tourism strategy. The same presentation highlights the forthcoming eTurista registry, a national online guest registration tool intended to improve data collection, local tax administration and the monitoring of short-term rentals.
This data emphasis runs through almost every aspect of Czechia’s current tourism model. Officials say they are already working with mobile network and card payment data to inform tourism policy. That matters because it suggests a destination trying to move away from anecdote and toward evidence — to understand not just how many people arrive, but where they go, what they spend and how patterns differ by market and season.
There is another pillar to the new strategy, and it may be the one with the sharpest international edge: gastronomy.
Food has become one of the most visible and ambitious elements of Czechia’s tourism repositioning. CzechTourism’s materials show gastronomy integrated directly into the “Feel Free” campaign, with dedicated 15-second and 6-second spots, two hero visuals and a place within the 30-second image ad used in markets including Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom. The messaging is carefully framed: Czech cuisine is presented as a meeting point of tradition and innovation, with beer culture, fine dining, themed culinary routes and wine tourism all folded into the same narrative.
The timing is not accidental. The country is leaning hard into the international visibility generated by the MICHELIN Guide. CzechTourism says media reach connected to the 2025 guide announcement exceeded 15.3 million contacts, with an advertising value equivalent of 9.3 million CZK, and that 20 restaurants reported a noticeable increase in visitor numbers and guest demand within a month of the announcement. The presentation goes as far as to say Czechia now ranks among the world’s top 16 gastronomic destinations. Whether or not one takes that ranking as a definitive measure, the strategic intent is unmistakable: food is no longer being treated as a supporting attraction but as a lead export in the destination brand.
That shift also helps Czechia speak to higher-value travellers. Gastronomy travels well across media, performs strongly in social formats and lends itself naturally to premium positioning. It is easier to sell indulgence, discovery and lifestyle through food than through abstract promises of heritage alone. The “Feel Free” line, especially in its gastronomy executions, is clearly trying to capture that mood: not merely to visit Czechia, but to enjoy it, taste it and experience it sensorially.
Digital infrastructure underpins that ambition. CzechTourism reports that in 2025 the domestic portal Kudy z nudy recorded more than 43.3 million visits, while the international #VisitCzechia portal drew nearly 2.9 million. Those traffic levels give the country a substantial owned-media base, useful not just for inspiration but for conversion and content amplification. A destination with that much first-party audience attention is in a better position to test campaigns, steer demand and support niche products than one relying entirely on paid media and third-party platforms.
What makes Czechia’s current tourism moment so interesting is that all of these pieces — premiumisation, campaign design, gastronomy, regionalisation and data — are moving in the same direction. This is not a case of a tourism board running glossy ads while the rest of the system stays unchanged. The policy presentations and the marketing presentations are telling the same story. Both are oriented toward higher-value growth, better data, stronger regional balance and a more intentional global profile.
That coherence is rare. Many destinations talk about sustainability and value-led tourism while still chasing raw numbers. Czechia, at least on the evidence of its 2026 plans, appears to be trying something more structured: building a tourism economy that earns more from visitors, spreads the gains more widely and markets itself with far greater precision.
The country is still early in that transition, and Prague will remain its defining tourism symbol for some time. But the direction of travel is increasingly clear. Czechia does not just want to be busy. It wants to be better sold, better managed and worth more.
That is a different kind of tourism story — and, for Europe, an increasingly important one.
By Sid Thaker
