The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
Project title: Services in tourism in the Czech-Polish border area
Focus area: Diversification of tourism by increasing the range and quality of regional products and services,Regional Development, Environment and Tourism
Implementation period: 01/10/2021–28/02/2023
Technická univerzita v Liberci/Technical University of Liberec
Address: Studentská 1402/2, 461 17 Liberec 1
Contact: Ing. Otakar Ungerman, Ph.D.
Email: otakar.ungerman@tul.cz
Wrocław University of Economics and Business, Filia Jeleni Góra
Address: ul. Komandorska 118/120, , Wrocław, , 53 345, Poland
Contact: dr hab. prof. Piotr Gryszel
Email: piotr.gryszel@ue.wroc.pl
The aim of the project is to identify changes in the offer of services in the field of tourism before and after the pandemic. The research will be carried out in the border region of the Jizera Mountains on both sides in the CZ and Poland. Teachers and students from both universities will take part in all activities, in cooperation with interest group of legal entities Turistický region Jizerské hory (TRHJ). The project will lead to mutual knowledge and exchange of experiences between students and teachers from both universities and representative of service providers THRJ.
The project focuses on the current situation in services in tourism, which is one of the most affected parts of the economy during the pandemic crisis. The project is geographically focused on the Czech-Polish border area. This is the Czech and Polish part of the Nisa Euroregion, specifically the Jizera Mountains and the Giant Mountains, which are the most attractive part of this locality for tourists.
According to data from the Czech Statistical Office, 109,000 people are employed in services in the Czech part of the Nisa Euroregion, 55,000 people in the Polish part and, for example, the number of beds in the Czech part is 49,700 and in the Polish part 28,552. However, these figures have changed during the pandemic and it is estimated that around 50% of employees have left the service sector. 7 million people visit the region every year. Of this, in 2020, about 300,000 guests were accommodated, who spent over 900,000 nights here (which is the level of 2015 and 2016), the decrease for 2020 was 30%. On average, guests spent 3 nights here in 2020, which is longer time than before the pandemic. A pandemic was declared in March 2020, which included government restrictions that significantly affected service providers. Service providers have responded to government restrictions by voluntarily or forcibly changing their service offerings to eliminate losses. The project focuses on the identification of these changes in the offer of services in the period before and after the pandemic. Should the pandemic continue for years to come, the project is designed to be implemented online.
The implementation of the project has two positive effects. The first is for tourism service providers on both sides of the border. Differences between the offer of services in the period before the pandemic and the offer of services after the pandemic will be explicitly identified. The research will focus on the number of individual types of services and the structure of the offer. Data collection will be carried out by a combination of personal and electronic surveys and subsequently evaluated by descriptive statistics and the method of testing statistical hypotheses. The hypotheses will concern the existence of differences between the fields of basic services: accommodation, catering and transport. The results of the research will be provided via TRJH to both partners and members of the interest group and all other entities offering services in the region through IC. The second positive is the interconnection of two educational institutions and especially students of both universities. Both partners (students of tourism departments) will participate in all outputs together, which will lead to an exchange of experiences with university studies, to a knowledge of socio-cultural differences between the partners and to their understanding. The project will help physically present the border area of a neighbouring country to students, which is something students often do not know, even though they live and study at the border. The mutual contacts can be used by both teachers and students to deepen mutual relations and to implement other projects.
Once the project has been assigned, a project website. At the same time, a group will be set up on Instagram, where current information from the project will be communicated. All project outputs are online, due to participation in the zero-waste program. The website will provide information on the type of project, sources of funding, participants, objectives, progress of the research and the results of the project. The website will keep a record of the following project outputs:
Other communication channels will be used to provide information about the project: