Prague bans evening bar crawls to discourage ‘drunk’ tourists

By CNN Newsource

Published October 15, 2024 7:35 AM

By Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) — Prague, a city as famous for its beer as its historic architecture, is set to ban late-night bar crawls, seeking to end its reputation as a party destination.

The Czech capital is the latest European tourism hot spot pushing back on crowds, amid concerns about the impact on locals’ quality of life.

Prague’s deputy mayor, Jiri Pospisil, said the city wants to discourage tourists who come “for a short time only to get drunk” in favor of “a more cultured, wealthier tourist,” according to the AFP news agency. Fellow deputy mayor Zdenek Hrib said the ban, which is yet to be made law, will take place between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time.

Over the past two decades, partly thanks to the boom in budget airlines, Prague has become a go-to destination for bachelor and bachelorette parties, particularly from the UK.

The news, announced on Monday, follows complaints from residents in Prague 1, the city’s historic district – home to the UNESCO-protected Old Town Square, Prague Castle and the Charles Bridge – over noise caused by rowdy pub crawls.

‘Nobody will be banned from going to a pub’

Vaclav Starek, head of the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants, praised the decision, telling AFP that “trips to the centre in search of beer have been a problem for local people and for other tourists too.”

The ban only impacts agency-organized group tours, and will not prevent individual groups organizing their own bar crawl or staying out late drinking. As Starek pointed out, “nobody will be banned from going to a pub.”

Simon Old, who works as the Prague specialist for StagWeb.co.uk and GoHen.com, two UK-based tour agencies that organize “stag and hen” bachelor and bachelorette parties for Brits abroad, suggested the ban won’t “deter stags and hens from heading to Prague at all.”

Calling the ban “half-hearted,” in a statement provided to CNN Travel, Old added that “whilst they’re well within their rights to try and curb anti-social behavior, people will just do their own pub crawls or do them earlier on.”

“Being a destination that has profited for years on its reputation for being a bit of a party city, it seems like they’re trying to have their cake and eat it with this,” he said.

Prague joins many cities across Europe that have been pushing back against tourists in recent months. Officials in Venice, Italy recently limited tour group sizes to 25 people and banned megaphones, while Barcelona’s mayor plans to end apartment rentals for tourists by 2028.