Assessing the impacts of tourism in post-socialist countries: A case study of the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic underwent many political and economic changes in the past decades, especially after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, when communism was brought down and democracy reinstated. The changes affected tourism as well as other areas. This research looks at the evolution of the tourism industry in the Czech Republic, especially concentrating on two vertical themes, comparing different tourism variables on time periods before and after 1989. Quantitative and descriptive methods are applied to economic, sociocultural and environmental impacts of tourism to provide a detail comparison of the two time periods. As the Czech Republic is a country in transition, the efficiency and the lack of current tourism models for transition countries are discussed. Some modest ideas for future research are also proposed.