Tomio Okamura

In connection with the discussion about Prague Pride, you said that Prague has unfortunately long since become a sexual destination. I was intrigued by the word "unfortunately" and the connection with the gay pride parade...

My comment needs to be put into context. When politicians were arguing about Prague Pride, it seemed to me that time was being wasted on completely secondary matters. I was responding in the sense that I don't understand why they were arguing about a gay pride parade or not, when we have long been paying for a sexual destination. Many tourists have been coming here for twenty years for prostitution (I'm thinking of heterosexual prostitution now). They come here for easy girls and cheap alcohol. If the politicians haven't noticed, they should at least take a walk down the street. In Prague 1 there are black chasers in the brothels there, our youth and children walk past them... ...and we're dealing with such a trivial matter as whether a gay pride parade is an outrage...

So you found the discussion inadequate and hypocritical?

I guess you could say that. Prague Pride was a completely marginal issue, while the serious issues are not being addressed here. The time spent debating the gay pride parade would have been better spent addressing the real problems that plague us in the Czech Republic.

After all, the impact of prides on tourism is positive. In Sao Paulo, for example, 10 million people gather for one event of this type...

To answer your original question: I don't mind Prague Pride. I'm very sensitive to people being restricted because of any views or beliefs - but only if they follow the rules that are there for everyone. If a person is hardworking and decent, then I don't care...

And that's what Prague Pride proved. The original fears of its opponents did not come true. There was no outrage, only a few guys in the parade half undressed, no "public orgy"...

Yes, we don't need to go into that. If someone is behaving decently and working, i.e. contributing to society, it seems to me inappropriate, especially if the groups are not small, to restrict them in any way.

I'm sure you have personal experience with singling out...

I myself and my family have had a lot of negative experiences with it - both because of our views and because of our background. My grandfather was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis because he was a non-communist resistance fighter, then he was imprisoned by the communists for five years because he was a non-communist resistance fighter... One of my uncles was expelled from medical school in his sixth year and was only graduated after the intercession of the whole class. Another uncle was expelled from the philosophy faculty and never returned. My mother only got into college on her third attempt, and then only at the electrical engineering faculty, where no girl wanted to go, even though she wanted to go to the philosophy faculty... I have experience with rejection too, because I'm half-Japanese and half-Czech. In my childhood I was always singled out for being Vietnamese or Chinese, in Japan I was a mixed race...

I'm sure that's reflected in your opinions...

I'm sure it does. I think that rather than suppressing the feelings of people who want to express themselves in some way, especially if they are shared by a larger group of people, that we need to be sensitive to them and reflect on them, because simply suppressing them can be socially counterproductive.

I understand.

We need to think about what the social contribution of those people is. We have a number of people who are not contributing to society, so why deal with gay people who work and pay taxes? I think most of them are decent people; I don't get any suggestions otherwise, and I get all sorts of suggestions from the public about the behaviour of maladjusted people based on my blogs.

So you have a positive view of homosexuals...

I come from a Catholic family; we went to church all the time, and I thought it was some kind of perversion because that's how it was interpreted to me. But then I met people like that, especially from the media, and I realized it was innate, and my view changed. I myself was born mixed race, I stuttered until I was 22 because I was partly raised in an orphanage where I was bullied, and it wasn't my fault either...

I'll add a little pearl - last year I was christening a travel agency catalogue for homosexuals with Janis Sidovsky, so some people thought I was gay. Also because I'm not married. I've had a few offers to meet them and they haven't offended me, even though I'm not gay... I have nothing against them.

It's especially hurtful to LGBT people when someone attacks their identity. Maybe you feel like a Czech...

No, no. I feel like a Moravian, after my mother...

Okay. So you feel like a Moravian and suddenly someone starts telling you that you're not Moravian, that you're Japanese and that nobody wants you here...

Well, I always say that I'm lucky to be half-Japanese, because Czech society has nothing against the Japanese. If I were another mixed-blood, it probably wouldn't be so easy. As far as identity is concerned, I think that all those who are different in some way, whether they are gay, Roma or white homeless, I don't care, it's important for them to realize that it's necessary to be an asset to society. That to me is the alpha and omega of thinking. If they are an asset, I don't have the slightest problem with anyone.

Going back to gay tourism: Do you think there are a lot of gay people coming here, or not enough? According to your press release, 6.34 million tourists visited the Czech Republic in 2010, 5% of whom were gay. In other metropolises, however, the percentage is higher...

We in our association are trying to map the gay tourism offer, we have been doing it for the third year now. We are interested in the potential of this clientele. There are about 30 specialised businesses, most of them in Prague, but there are also in Brno, Ostrava, Pardubice and Liberec. According to the reports we have, foreign tourists make up a third and sometimes even half of the visitors. There are also accommodation facilities specifically for gays.

Why is Prague attractive for gay tourism?

It is firstly because Czechs are mostly atheistic and do not have such a strict view of homosexuality in general, for example compared to Poland, and mainly because Prague is very anonymous. We are sixth in Europe in terms of the number of tourists who come here, but our centre is concentrated in the smallest area of all those cities. Four times more tourists come here every year than the population of Prague, so the concentration of tourists in the centre is very high, which contributes to the feeling of anonymity.

Do you think the range of facilities and services for gay people in Prague is good? If we're talking about just 30 businesses, that's how many there are in Miami on one side street... And even in terms of quality, I'm more of a skeptic...

In general, I think that regardless of gay people, the restaurants or hotels in downtown Prague are of a good standard. For example, the range of accommodation services in Prague is generally rated very highly. This is because the hotels here are mostly new, built after 89, whereas in Paris or Rome the hotels are on average older. However, we certainly lag behind in the quality of service, the level of behaviour in service or the level of street crime. After all, gay people use the same services as other tourists, they don't just go to gay establishments. As for those, I confess I've only been there once in my life (at Friends) and I didn't find it ill-equipped...

I haven't noticed that the Czech Republic is trying to promote this segment in any way...

It's all connected to everything. When you asked about the percentage of gays coming to Prague, I think it basically corresponds - New York, which is the most attractive American destination, receives 50 million tourists a year and 10% of them are gay. But New York promotes gay tourism, for example, in 2009 they had a massive campaign, with advertising on bus stops, railway stations, lampposts, on the internet and in magazines... We don't have that in the Czech Republic.

Why not? After all, gay tourists like to spend and as a market segment they must be interesting...

That's true. According to American data, a male homosexual tourist there spends an average of $800 on one holiday, whereas a heterosexual male spends only $540. The entire turnover of gay tourism in America is estimated at $70 billion.

It is even less understandable that no one in the Czech Republic is targeting gays yet. The official Czech Tourism agency promotes the Czech Republic as a golf destination and less than a quarter of foreign golfers come here compared to gay men... I even noticed that some special golf spot was produced for foreign TV...

Such advertising is extremely expensive and I agree that it doesn't make much sense to promote golf in this way. Even gay tourism should certainly be supported, but in the current situation, when we don't even cover the basic segments, and when all the promotion is oriented towards Prague and the rest of the tourist potential of the Czech Republic is untapped, the promotion should be directed there. This is nothing against gays or golfers, but the money we have for advertising should now be used for other things. However, I don't decide about this money, it is in the hands of the state officials of Czech Tourism.

So it's too early to promote gay tourism?

No, I'm saying that in the context of the expensive spots. There are plenty of much cheaper ways we can promote Prague as a gay-friendly destination. I had already drawn up a draft concept in this direction a few years ago, but as you can guess, none of the state bodies responsible for tourism took it up. I like what Cologne in Germany is doing, for example. They have introduced the 'Pink Welcome Card', which is a discount system designed specifically for homosexuals, linked to a voucher to use public transport. It is also linked to an information portal directly on the city's official website. It's not just about the discounts, it's about the fact that if a destination profiles itself as "friendly", then it generates interest. This doesn't just apply to gay people, but also to senior tourists, who are sometimes overlooked.

If we spent those crazy millions on the Open Card in Prague, surely it would not be a problem to follow that up with a segmentally targeted tourist promotion. It wouldn't be expensive and could work for all tourists, not just homosexuals, like in Germany.