The Czech Tourism Office – CzechTourism is changing its management. From November 1, 2023, the current director of marketing and foreign offices, František Reismüller, will be the new director based on a selection process. This was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization and Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš.
The open selection process, in which eleven people applied, was announced by the Ministry of Regional Development (MMR) because the current director of the CzechTourism agency, Jan Herget, decided to leave.
Read the interview at our last magazine issue: https://www.czechleaders.com/interviews/jan-herget
In the 2nd round of the selection of the new management, the MMR Commission decided between two candidates. A key role was played by the vision of where CzechTourism and the promotion of the Czech Republic as a tourism destination in domestic and foreign markets should go so that it is economically beneficial for the whole country.
“I believe that the new director of the CzechTourism agency, František Reismüller, who knows the Czech Tourism Office very well, will move the entire tourism sector forward. It is clear from the latest data on the number of visitors to hotels in the Czech Republic that, although we have already reached pre-covid numbers, the ratio of Czech versus foreign guests visiting us has changed. According to the committee that selected him, the new director has great potential to change that, as he previously worked as the director of marketing and foreign representations of CzechTourism. Among other things, he and his team are behind the Unexpected Traditions campaign, valued by experts, which is currently running in 13 countries around the world with the aim of attracting as many foreign tourists as possible to the Czech Republic,” says Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization and Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš and adds: “František Reismüller not only during the preparation of the campaign, he showed the importance of cooperation across destination management in the Czech Republic, because each region has its own theme in the visuals. And his management of foreign representations clearly shows an understanding of the specifics of individual countries and the necessary contextual insight. He realizes that we cannot do without digitization in the tourism industry in the future. This also led to the fact that from November 1 this year he will manage the entire CzechTourism. I wish him the best of luck.”
M.Sc. František Reismüller, Ph.D. he studied sinology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University. Right after school, he started working in tourism, first as a business development manager in the private sector. In 2013, he founded the foreign representative office of CzechTourism in Shanghai and was its director for four years. Subsequently, he spent three years working for the European Travel Commission (ETC), among other things, he was its marketing and project manager in Brussels. He then returned to the CzechTourism agency in the position of Director of Marketing and Foreign Representations, where he is to this day. František Reismüller is married and has one child. He speaks English, Chinese and German. In his free time, he dedicates himself to translations of beautiful literature from Chinese to Czech and to research in the field of Chinese culture and society.
“I feel very strongly that the tourism industry has changed after the covid-19 pandemic, just like the whole world. When presenting the Czech Republic at home and abroad, these changes need to be respected and accommodated, while at the same time it is necessary to build on what is already working, i.e. the Strategy of the CzechTourism agency and the Czech Republic 2021-2025 destination. My main priorities at the head of the Czech Tourism Office will therefore be the optimization of all agency activities and digitization in the sense of transparency and an emphasis on measurable and accurate data-based marketing. In practice, this means, among other things, the further development of the Kudy z nudy and Visit Czechia portals, which are highly appreciated by people,” says the future director of the Czech Tourism Office – CzechTourism František Reismüller, adding: “It is also necessary to address multi-source financing with the aim of saving the costs of the state budget and the overlap of activities agencies to synergistically build the Czech brand across industries and in cooperation with other state institutions. Last but not least, I want to emphasize a comprehensive, infrastructurally grasped product portfolio that reflects the needs of source markets and the offer of Czech tourist destinations. I am very much looking forward to my new job, I thank the MMR for the promised support, my predecessor and the entire excellent CzechTourism team, without whom it would not have been possible.”
František Reismüller wants to meet and exchange the agenda with outgoing director Jan Herget in his “old” workplace in his new position next week. He also plans to meet soon with all the employees of the CzechTourism agency, as well as with representatives of associations and unions active in the tourism industry, as well as with the CEOs of the CzechInvest and CzechTrade agencies, with whom CzechTourism shares the Czech House building in Štěpánská Street in Prague. All this is to maximally develop tourism for the benefit of the whole of the Czech Republic.