It’s an ordinary autumn day, just before six in the afternoon in the Czech capital, Prague. Near the town hall in Old Town Square, it looks like people have gathered for a huge demonstration. But appearances are deceiving – they’re just thousands of tourists, waiting under Prague’s famous medieval astronomical clock to strike six. Then with the figures of the apostles and a crowing rooster, begins a spectacle that most of the tourists from all over the world are filming with their mobile phones. “It’s beautiful, it was worth the wait, a great experience,” says George, a 40-year-old from Chicago, US, who has the Czech Republic’s capital as one of five stops on his two-week European trip.

The magical power of Lonely Planet

There is a long line of other tourists outside the hall of the nearby Central Municipal Library of Prague. Not because they care so much about one of the largest libraries in the Czech Republic, which thousands of Prague residents use every day to borrow books. Instead, they are interested in a sculpture by Slovak artist Matej Kren, which consists of eight thousand books and is located in the entrance hall of the library. Inside the sculpture there are two mirrors that create the illusion of infinite space.

The ‘Endless Fountain’, as the sculpture is called, has been standing since 1998 and for many years only occasionally did anyone catch a glimpse of its interior. But then it found its way to Lonely Planet and from there to other Prague travel guides and social networks. Then it turned into hell for the library staff. “We don’t know what to do, we are a public organization, we cannot charge entry or restrict tourists in any way. But it’s often unbearable,” a librarian tells an elderly visitor struggling to make his way through the throngs of tourists.

End of the “poor women”

These are just two of the many examples of how the historic center of the Czech capital is suffering from “hyper-tourism”. Prague is one of Europe’s most visited cities by tourists – many travel guides tout it as ‘Golden’, the most beautiful European city. But now Prague’s city council has decided to take action against at least one of the most annoying manifestations of hypertourism – the organized evening pub crawls, “barotsárkas”, which have been offered to tourists for several years. Groups of Prague visitors are guided to pubs in the evening and at night for a set price and can drink as much as they like. This is now prohibited from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

“I think we are finally making it easier for the residents of our city to sleep. Prague is a place for everyone who behaves with dignity and discretion,” former MEP and current city councilor Jirji Pospišil told DW.

The ban on such pub crawls imposed in mid-October is satisfying to many residents of central Prague. “Especially in the summer, I often had to call the police at three in the morning. When you have a group of thirty drunks sitting in the middle of the street under your windows, it’s unbearable,” says Thomas Vick, an architect, who lives on the top floor of a building behind the cathedral near Old Town Square.

Fewer and fewer locals in the center

The noisy nocturnal ramblings of tourists weren’t the only thing that bothered Vic. His other problem is called Airbnb. Online renting of apartments to tourists has reached alarming proportions in Prague – fewer and fewer locals still live in the city centre. “The worst thing is not the stairs full of drunk tourists,” says Vic, “but the fact that there are people walking around the house where families with small children live and you don’t know anything about them.”

In the Czech Republic it is illegal to house tourists in apartments, but the state does not prosecute violations of the law. Apart from the aforementioned effects, there are other negative aspects. “We know that these accommodations worsen the situation in the housing sector in Prague,” admits Pospisil. However, Prague has not yet decided to take decisive action against renting out apartments to tourists.

An important economic sector

The reason is the huge importance of the tourism sector for the Czech economy, especially for Prague. According to the state agency CzechTourism, tourism revenue in 2023 will amount to around seven billion euros. With these and around a quarter of a million workers, tourism is more important to the Czech Republic than agriculture, for example.

Last year, 22 million foreign tourists stayed overnight in the Czech Republic, of which more than eight million stayed in Prague. This year is shaping up to be even better for the country than last year. Most tourists come from neighboring countries, but the number of tourists overall is approaching pre-pandemic levels.

However, some experts do not want to talk about “hypertourism” in general – they see only a few places being affected, such as the historic center of Prague. “About 1.3 million people live in Prague and about 8 million visit the city every year. So the numbers are not that bad,” Karel Virut, a well-known Czech tourism expert, recently told Czech Radio. “The problem is probably the short-term stay in apartments, which is not under control. Seven out of ten people who live in the historic center are tourists.”

Edited by: Kostas Argyros