Irrespective of modernisation, Prague has been totally ruined by tourism. It is not a joke when
@Jonathan R said
in the Prague thread that the best time to visit to avoid crowds of tourists is 1985.
The effects of mass over tourism and over development from domestic sources are different, and can only be managed by different civic approaches to development. Hong Kong and Bangkok receive the most visitors of any cities worldwide, but still have a lot of authentic elements, even if they have changed a lot (the first time I went to HK I stayed in the Kowloon Walled City, gone since 1994). But a majority of people in the city at any one time are still locals, and the local government and many companies and other real entities operate out of central HK or Bangkok. In Prague the combination of over tourism and a lack of preservation of use and purpose has made the ratio of tourists to locals, particularly in Prague 1, extremely skewed. Apart from Barcelona, no large city absorbs so many visitors in such a small area, and visitors outnumber residents more than 10:1 in Prague 1 year round. Smaller cities like Dubrovnik, Rhodes, and Venice have it even worse, ratio-wise. On a relatively recent occasion when I was in Prague, the newly re-opened Hotel Grand Europa had staff who did not speak Czech and the food they sell as 'Czech' is made up and did not exist even in the 1990s let alone 'traditionally'. Those, as a start, are reflective of astounding failures on the part of the city and Czech governments to manage the influx of tourists. The government has even moved out of the centre, and a vast majority of real businesses have moved out. Prague 1 is a sort of fake Disneyland for tourists.
