Prague bans beer consumption during organized pub crawls

So now Prague too. The city council of the Czech capital recently decided by a majority vote that beer will no longer be allowed to be served to tourists in the future. At least not between ten p.m. and six in the morning and in case tourists join together for organized pub crawls during this time. This form of collective carousing led by an organizer should be banned from now on. The person you don’t want to have around in Prague under any circumstances, like almost everywhere else, is the pariah among holidaymakers: the drunk tourist.

At first glance, not to say soberly, this may seem obvious. However, there are several aspects of this official decision that are worth considering. Firstly, there is the mechanism of supply and demand. Countless cities and regions attract holidaymakers with alcohol, be it cheap (Prague) or expensive beer (Munich), red (Törggelen in South Tyrol) or white booze (Heuriger in Vienna). But alas, such offers are met with demand. Only Munich is still openly committed to drinking tourists, although the Oktoberfest has recently tipped alarmingly towards a champagne celebrity party.

This leads to a second aspect in this matter: we hear from Prague that they want to focus on more cultured, wealthier tourists. You can replace Prague with almost any tourist destination, from Mallorca to Tallinn: there is an urgent and immediate need for quality tourism everywhere, with premium guests. What is at least strange is that it is not only in Prague that sophistication and prosperity are simply equated, as if one requires the other.

In this logic, anyone who cannot afford a first-class hotel or a star restaurant, who takes the metro instead of a taxi, who buys a museum ticket for little money instead of a box seat at the opera for large sums and who drinks a Pilsner in the evening and not a magnum bottle of Bordeaux wine is not welcome . Not even when, despite his faint-heartedness, he doesn’t wake up half the townspeople from their sleep at night or pukes behind every other corner of the house.

The problem with global tourism is that the well-off alone are not enough to keep it going. That some holidaymakers stroll through a city and only buy three scoops of ice cream – but if they don’t come, the ice cream parlor would have to close. That you have to generate the same sales with the knick-knack boutique and also ensure an income for as many employees as with a hands-to-the-sky party bar.

However, calling the verbal castigation of drinking tourists hypocritical because in one way or another almost all locals benefit from them doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. If you look at how long, how half-heartedly and therefore unsuccessfully initiatives have been launched to curb or completely eradicate drinking tourism, only one conclusion remains: the public debate about holiday-related binge drinking is a particularly subtle marketing strategy. This ultimately sends a signal to all fuel tourists: we have the right infrastructure here, here you are among your own kind. We still have a free seat at the counter. It’s just that it’s best said in cryptic terms. Arrives better.