INTRODUCTORY WORD Like in the past, this year the Yearbook brings information about activities of the Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic in the field of tourism in 2012. It is mainly about statistical data and trends in the tourism sector, activities related to drafting of concepts, legal regulation and international co‑operation in the field of tourism. These activities are either of an administrative nature which derives from the powers of the Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic being the central state administration authority, or they focus on specific measures supporting tourism development in the Czech Republic. From the statistical viewpoint, the performance of the tourism industry in the Czech Republic in 2012 can be characterized as a period of further recovery, however not all performance parameters of the industry reached the pre‑crisis levels of 2007 yet. Impacts of many austerity packages applied both in the Czech Republic and some important source markets resulted mainly in stagnating earnings in the tourism industry. Although the number of visitors in collective accommodation establishments grew by more than 5%, the number of overnight stays kept falling. It can be expected that this situation will not change in the future as it is fully in line with the trend of vacations becoming shorter. This year again confirmed the trend of decreasing international competitiveness of the Czech Republic and its 22nd position among evaluated European countries means that all relevant stakeholders in tourism must have the same strategic goal: to improve the tourism offer and increase attractiveness of the Czech Republic as a tourist destination. Year 2012 was devoted to drafting of a new National Tourism Policy of the Czech Republic for the period 2014‑2020 which was prepared jointly with CzechTourism – Destination Marketing Strategy 2013–2020. The new Tourism policy applies a wide range of innovative approaches to tourism support and is therefore a promise for the future period which will offer the use of funds for supporting tourism during the next programming period of the European Union. Further work was also done on the Act on Tourism Support, however, advocating its concept and searching for relevant and consistent arguments needed for its final approval seems to be a challenging task which still remains to be accomplished. An important pre‑condition for the approval is a consensus of all tourism stakeholders about its final wording and the willingness to jointly seek arguments for its adoption. The Ministry for Regional Development was very active in the area of administrative agenda related in particular to the Act No. 179/2006 Coll. and the Act No. 159/1999 Coll. It turned out that it is necessary to prepare amendment to the latter Act in order to clarify definitions of its certain provisions in order to keep the adequate level of consumer protection. Among other activities, we can mention continuing work on the Czech Service Quality System as a tool enabling entities active in the field of tourism to improve service quality, and several censuses on nation‑wide tourism statistics were carried out. The accommodation establishment census, in particular, showed very interesting first results. This year of the National Tourism Support Programme was also a success and already in a third consecutive year offered support to specific projects in the area of social tourism. The Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic was also very active in the field of international co‑operation and succeeded in signing several international agreements, fostering bilateral relations with key source countries for incoming tourism and collaborating on specific projects with international organisations. Key activities included the European Commission’s EDEN project, this time aimed at Accessible Travel, and other similarly important initiatives implemented mainly in co‑operation with the UNWTO and OECD on visa issues, sustainable development and statistics. We firmly believe that this publication will become an important source of data and information in your work which you will frequently and gladly come back to. Team of authors TOURISM IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC IN 2012