MIAS University held its first conference after two years of Covid 19 on 19^th of May 2022, and what else could have been discussed other than the impacts of Covid 19 pandemics. Therefore the topic of 11^th annual conference-Regional development between theory and practice was: Impacts of Covid 19 on the development of European regions.

Covid 19 pandemic has not just stopped our lives but also brought new original ways of dealing with some situations, and innovations which will clearly remain a part of our lives. Different countries have taken different measures which helped to create different scenarios of possible solutions, and showed which measures are the most effective ones.

Scientists and experts from different European countries presented their topics. We are proud that we could welcome experts from Austria, Poland, Germany and Hungary.

First part of the English section of the conference was dedicated to tourism and it started by first speaker Egon Smeral from MODUL University Vienna, an expert with many publications written over the last 50 years. During the decade he has presented at conferences and meetings around the world and we were pleased that he came to Prague to present on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Economic and Tourism Development in Europe’s Regions and Countries. His presentation focused on the analysis of GDP of European countries such as the strength of loss due to the level of counties’ tourism or its IT development. Consequently, he brought the point of forecasting the long-term and medium-term impacts of the pandemic by considering the Ukrainian war and mentioning the notion that “Tourism is a resilient industry”- it does not hold in the case of pandemics or wars.

Next topic was presented by the team from Cracow University of Economics – Anna Karwińska, Michał Kudłacz, Dorota Jopek, Michał Wiśniewski. They connected online and introduced Crakow culture and the description of its tourism. One of the issues before the pandemic was the problem of overtourism concentrated in some areas and the conflict of interest of tourists and local inhabitants. Contrast, Cracow became a ghost city during the pandemic. Another field that suffered is business, as there was a 77,2% decrease in business meetings in 2020 compared to the year 2019. Subsequently, the new threats and the feeling of insecurity brought by the War in Ukraine were mentioned.

The last presenter or the first  Eglish section was Antonio Roldan-Ponce, the head of Department Tourism & Event Management at Fachhochschule Dresden – University of Applied Sciences. This respected specialist with experience from Spain, United Kingdom and Germany came to MIAS to speak about The impact of COVID-19 on tourist operations and evaluation of recovery strategies through scenario analysis. He presented many particular statistics on the decline of amount of arriving tourist and the course of accommodation services. Furthermore, he brought an interesting analysis of Google trend of people searching Dresden, Berlin and Prague due to the decrease in the tourism.
Second part of the English section was shorter than expected as some of the guests could not come, yet it was success anyway. In this part of the conference, representatives from Hungary and Czech introduced their topics. Miroslav Daněk focused on the support for specific types of regions. He commented on the health and economic impacts of the pandemic and the development of unemployment in the Czech Republic. This presentation familiarized us with the National Recovery Plan of the Czech Republic compiled by the Czech Ministry of Regional Development. Its key measures pay attention especially to the power industry, education, clear mobility and transport. Then he mentioned the certain regional development strategies and their 6 strategic goals. Last English presenter was Tom Kauko, an independent researcher from Budapest, who covers the fields of real estate, planning and urban affairs. During his online presentation he brought outcomes of his research Resilience to virus outbreak in a real estate context. He targeted the matter how to bounce back the economy from COVID-19 impacts. One of the findings is that the real estate must respond to the changing work habits, such as people leaving their offices and working from home. The next challenge will be to restart business and how the industry will adapt to the impacts of the pandemic. Last but not least, he spoke about the risk of real estate investment.