This city is no lager hoppy go lucky.
Prague has banned organized nighttime pub crawls, as the popular after-hours pastime raked in cash for bars but wreaked havoc for residents and local authorities.
The pub crawls drew over 7 million visitors to the Czech capital last year — and brought loud noises and plenty of street garbage in tow.
“We don’t want to support cheap alco-tourism that’s unfortunately still quite common in Prague,” said Adam Zabranský, a city council member who drafted the ban proposal.
The measure — which goes into effect in November — will be enforced by city police between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Tour organizers who violate the ban will face fines of up to 100,000 koruna, or $4,300.
The all-out ban came after previous efforts to deal with the city’s noise, waste and reputational concerns failed.
In 2019, officials even appointed a night mayor whose job was to minimize the impact of nightlife on residents.
“It would be great if the owners of the establishments take their share of responsibility,” Zabranský lamented.
“As it is, the residents in the busy areas face the negative consequences while the bar owners participating in the pub crawls make profit and don’t care about the problems.”
The ban is also part of a larger drive to promote cultural tourism in the hopes of attracting visitors who stay for longer than one wild weekend.
“People coming to experience culture behave differently than those who arrive to drink all weekend long,” Zabranský noted.
An agency that organizes pub crawls in Prague, however, denounced the ban as a “populist move.”
“(The pub crawl) was very nice,” German tourist Melissa Haine said of her experience. “I think it’s very funny, and you get to know new people.”
Another group, the Drunken Monkey, claimed that the ban ”makes a mistake that will make the situation even worse.”
Organizers and pub crawl guides help the city and police keep people quiet and enforce the rules on noise and others,” they said in a statement.
“Without the guides, the problems with noise will become even worse,” they added.
The Drunken Monkey said that it had not been fined due to noise since its operations started in 2011, and no complaints about noise were ever logged on the streets it uses.
While pub crawls are off the menu, visitors are still encouraged to sample Prague’s signature local beer — after all, the country is already the world’s largest consumer of the brew per capita.
“Czechia has exceptional potential in beer tourism, thanks to its long history of brewing, unique breweries and the current trend of experiential and sustainable tourism,” said František Reismüller, the head of the country’s tourist authority.
“Our goal is to show that beer travel can be not only about tasting great beer, but also about learning about Czech culture, traditions and history.”
With Post wires
