Enda Brady: UK correspondent on Prague cracking down on pub crawls in a bid to attract 'cultured' tourists

One European hotspot has had enough of British stag parties and hopes to attract more 'cultured' visitors to the region.

City councillors in Prague have banned organised night-time pub crawls put on by travel agencies - meaning travellers will need to amuse themselves in other ways from 10pm to 6am.

UK correspondent Enda Brady says the city hopes to attract wealthier tourists looking to explore Prague's cultural offerings. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Into Brady UK correspondence with us now into Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hello, Hea, They're great to speak to you, Linda.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Did you manage to get tickets to Oasis?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Ha? No, I'm still waiting, but I know what will
happen A week beforehand. Someone will get sick or someone's
friend won't be able to make it, and Oasis tickets
will miraculously appear. So I'm not panicking.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I got tickets to Oasis today.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh, well done. You You need to come down here.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Come down to the southern part of the world, because
it's like easy peasy down here, no problem, bring it on.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
But as I sit here in West London, as we
head into winter, the thoughts of some time in New
Zealand is very appealing.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, and we only paid one hundred and seventy five quid,
so that's not even the bad.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well done, well yeah, I mean they clearly haven't fleeced
people in New Zealand like they have done in England
and Ireland.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
You guys, you guys got all the hype, in the
excitement and you got ripped off and then by the
settled down. The only trouble is they sittled down by
the time they got here. The only trouble, of course, Inda,
is there's no guarantee that thus all going to be
performing by the time they get down here, do you
know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, I give it about a week actually, in fairness,
we'll see, we'll see. Hi.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
So Kiez rolled out the big guns, is he?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yes? So there's a big dinner last night at the
Guildhall in London for all these business leaders from all
over the world. He's trying to get them to invest
in the UK and trying to drum up growth really
for the economy because it badly needs it. They had
British beef, there was a speech by the Prime Minister,
there was music by Elton John in person, and King

(01:32):
Charles turned up for dinner as well. So quite an
impressive show this country can still put on. What the
business leaders make of it, I guess we'll find out
when they start writing checks and actually investing in Britain.
But there is a lot of investment coming. Starmer knows
that for him to get this country back on its feet,
moving again and flexing its muscles on the global stage,

(01:54):
he needs growth.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Yeah, big time. And so what I mean, they're obviously
making a bunch of investments and announcements ahead of the
Badget what's the biggest so far?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
The biggest one, that eye catching one is two billion
dollars worth of investment going into London Stanstead Airport. Now
there's long been talk about heat throw expanding in West
London London Heathrow Airport. I don't think that's ever gonna
happen because it's so built up. They would be basically
demolishing villages to make way for a third runway. And

(02:23):
I think it's clear people have realized that there is
airport capacity in the other kind of regional airports and
Stanstead is prime for development. So two billion dollars of
private equity capital going into that to make stand Stead
better and bring it on. I mean, I just think
there's so much optimism here, there's so much good to
tap into. You just hope Stammer can just navigate his

(02:45):
way through some of the pitfalls he's had recently.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
What do you make of that? Because I haven't had
a chance to talk to you about that. I mean,
the stuff has got real, real dusty, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Look there's you've got this vicious conservative right wing media
who will never ever accept it didn't even like Tony
Blair and he was in power for eleven years. Yeah,
and everything was far far better here when Blair was
in charge. Look, Starmer's one hundred days in and they're
all for getting rid of them already. There are certain
sections of the right wing press, but I think judge
him after five years, not one hundred days. And look

(03:19):
he accepted Taylor Swift tickets. Yeah, he should have sat
at home with a big book of economics and studied
all day and maybe had a coffee and gone for
a walk and gone back to the books. You know,
he's only human. I do think he messed up with
the donations from Lord Ali. I mean, if you're earning
what three hundred and seventy k and Z the year,

(03:39):
you should be able to buy your own clothes. And
you know, honestly, you know, forty grand's worth of clothing
donations coming in from a billionaire pier. It's not a
great look when you're meant to be the leader of
the Party of the working people.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, now you make a very very good point. Hey,
what do you make of Prague deciding its head absolutely
enough of the British stag panties?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I absolutely love this story and good on them, because
you travel around European cities and the last thing you
want to see is a whole load of English blokes
dressed up as superheroes, singing football songs at foreign girls
and drinking larger till they fall over. We've seen so
many bad cases of people, extreme cases granted, urinating on

(04:21):
war memorials in Estonia and Lithuania, and the people of
the Czech Republic have just had enough. So what they're
doing now is they're banning organized pub crawls from ten
pm until six am, and they're getting rid of all
the kind of stuff that attracts these stag parties in
huge numbers. So I've been to Prague. It's a beautiful city,

(04:41):
very cultured, and that's the word they're looking for. They
want cultured visitors. I think they've had enough of. You know,
Batman and Robin and Superman and the lads all heading
off from South Wales for a weekend to drink twenty
five pints a day. Came over weird.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Enough in the thank you as always appreciated, look after
yourself in the Brady correspond For more from Hither Duplessy
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