Six hundred new small boats were launched on Czech rivers last year, an increase of 30 percent y-o-y. The growing leisure activity, which combines sport with sight-seeing is creating demand for the construction of new marinas in the country’s more popular locations.
One of the existing routes where water tourism is flourishing is the BaÅ¥a canal near ZlÃn in Moravia, where traffic increased 25 percent y-o-y in 2012. The 52 km-long canal was built in the 1920’s to aid in logistics requirements for a huge shoe production operation in Zlin.
The Transport Ministry and the National Waterways Authority plan to support the trend and build a network of public marinas along the Elbe river this year. Eighteen should be built in more frequented tourist destinations such as Litoměřice or Libochovany.
