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Pub crawls in Prague have been banned at night by city councillors aiming to attract “more cultured” tourists to the Czech capital.
The city’s deputy mayor, Zdenek Hrib, said on Monday that all drinking tours organised by tourism providers between 10pm and 6am could no longer operate.
According to Jiri Pospisil, also deputy mayor for Prague, city hall is seeking a “more cultured, wealthier tourist”, not “one who comes for a short time only to get drunk”, reports Agence France-Presse.
The city’s motion said: “Unreasonable alcohol consumption and disruptive behaviour associated with pub crawls can give the impression of a lack of culture in society, can reduce the sense of safety and … can have a negative impact on how the city is perceived by tourists, potential investors and residents themselves.”
Concentrated around the bars and nightclubs near Wenceslas Square, Prague’s pub and bar crawls are particularly popular with British tourists celebrating stag and hen dos.
Mr Pospisil said, “The guides had no objections to the ban at all”.
The head of the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants, Vaclav Starek, told AFP: “Trips to the centre in search of beer have been a problem for local people and for other tourists too.
“I don’t think this will hurt our sales. Nobody will be banned from going to a pub, but these nightly organised pub crawls … are nothing we would need.”
It’s not Prague’s first attempt to reduce the toll of nightlife on locals in the city.
In May, a district council in Prague proposed that outrageous costumes worn by stag and hen party groups be banned to tackle overtourism.
The suggested ‘silly costume’ ban is intended to address noise pollution and unruly tourist behaviour in the nightlife scene.
In the proposal, Prague 1 councillor Bronislava Sitár Baboráková, said the costumes “exceed generally acceptable social conventions” and negatively impact residents – particularly highlighting the effect on elderly people and children.
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