Prague Is Tired of Tourists Who Come 'to Get Drunk'

Prague would like booze-seeking bachelor and bachelorette parties to take their shenanigans elsewhere. The BBC reports the Czech capital will ban agency-organized pub crawls between the hours of 10pm and 6am. These tend to be popular with "foreign stag and hen dos," particularly from the UK. The amendment greenlit by the Prague City Council will curtail "organized movements of tourists from pub to pub, disrupting the night peace especially in the center." The hope, per Deputy Mayor Jiri Pospisil, is to make Prague a place of "refinement." He added, per the Guardian, that the city is "seeking a more cultured, wealthier tourist ... not one who comes for a short time only to get drunk."

Proponents say it will reduce the strain on cleaning and police services and ease the "chronic noise" that troubles some residents. The BBC also points out the bar-heavy central Prague One district also largely doubles as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Prague Pub Crawl, an organizer of the targeted pub crawls, derided the ban as "merely a populist move to cover up the city management's inability to address real issues, such as the lack of municipal police officers to enforce night-time peace." CNN reports the ban will kick in early next month. (More Prague stories.)