So this is sort of sad or darker in tone, but one consideration is the Ukraine refugees. Theres ~5.7M, which is large fraction of the population of neighboring countries.
While looking for hotels, you can notice many hotels with a notice offering free stays for refugees. My sense this is a strong, genuine offer and a lot of capacity was used.
So that would use a lot of rooms, in addition to being demand surging after being capped by COVID.
(Yes, I have thought about the elasticity and other indirect effects for refugees by booking or going to Prague—this effect is probably tiny or nil.)
Yeah, I confirmed directly that the refugees weren’t what was driving the Prague problem (though maybe on the margin it helps to make it so bad), since last weekend and the weekend following the conference had normal Eastern European prices.
So this is sort of sad or darker in tone, but one consideration is the Ukraine refugees. Theres ~5.7M, which is large fraction of the population of neighboring countries.
While looking for hotels, you can notice many hotels with a notice offering free stays for refugees. My sense this is a strong, genuine offer and a lot of capacity was used.
So that would use a lot of rooms, in addition to being demand surging after being capped by COVID.
(Yes, I have thought about the elasticity and other indirect effects for refugees by booking or going to Prague—this effect is probably tiny or nil.)
Yeah, I confirmed directly that the refugees weren’t what was driving the Prague problem (though maybe on the margin it helps to make it so bad), since last weekend and the weekend following the conference had normal Eastern European prices.