Differences in the spatial patterns of urban tourism in Vienna and Prague

96 UDC: 796.5:711.43(437.10)(436.1) DOI: 10.5379/urbani-izziv-en-2013-24-02-002 Received: 27 June 2013 Accepted: 5 August 2013 Bálint KÁDÁR Differences in the spatial patterns of urban tourism in Vienna and Prague In Central Europe the two major urban tourism destinations are Vienna and Prague – with both registering the same number of foreign arrivals in 2011. Despite the two cities being similar in their size and range of cultural tourism, they differ significantly in tourists’ spatial distribution and space usage. In Prague, congestion, overcrowding and the mono‑functional use of the city centre is well known and documented, whereas in Vienna the city centre hosts a similar number of visitors without conflicts between local functions and tourism. Data obtained from geographically‑referenced photography of the two cities Urbani izziv, volume 24, no. 2, 2013 uploaded to image‑sharing web sites were used to build graphs of the spatial distribution of tourist attractions and routes. Analysing these comparable graphs resulted in some possible explanations regarding the differences in the two cities’ tourist systems. These are mainly related to the morphological layout of the two cities and their divergent approaches to developing urban tourism infrastructures over the past decade. Key words: urban tourism, urban morphology, impact of tourism, urban space usage, geotagging, Vienna, Prague 97 Differences in the spatial patterns of urban tourism in Vienna and Prague 1 Introduction Vienna and Prague are both cities known throughout the world for their historical urban scenes, architectural monuments and cultural points of interest. In 2011 Prague and Vienna ranked sixth and seventh among cities of the European Union according to TourMIS annual data (2012), with Prague having more tourist bed nights and Vienna more tourist arrivals. As preferred standalone weekend destinations, a large number of tourists visit Vienna, Prague and Budapest together in a Central–Eastern European round‑trip (Puczkó & Rátz, 2000). These three important cities of the former Habsburg Empire have similar tourist attractions; however, over the past twenty years Budapest has been attracting only half the number of visitors as its rivals. Vienna and Prague have similar tourism industries at first sight, but there are important differences in history, urban planning practices and tourism destination management. The same numbers of visitors use two urban structures with different morphologies, resulting in very contrasting tourism impacts on the local systems of these cities. Tourists in cities consume a series of experiences ranging from sights, monuments, museums or cultural events to shopping, dining and interaction with other people. Cities compete on the global market for tourists by developing their attractions and their urban surroundings. However, in tourist‑historic cities (Ashworth & Turnbridge, 1990) like Vienna and Prague, the majority of attractions and their urban settings are monuments in historical urban layouts with an evolved and protected morphology, also used by the local community with their own infrastructures, businesses and cultural uses. These cities have improved their tourism attractiveness in the past decade by improving the pedestrian access in their city centres and by developing their cultural tourism services and their commercial and retail services, along with the necessary refurbishment of streets and historical buildings. However, as increasingly more visitors now gather in the pedestrian‑friendly public spaces around the main monuments, the space for local uses diminishes. Grocery stores and workshops turn into souvenir shops and local pubs into fancy restaurants, and entire apartment buildings are converted into hotels because these are now more profitable services and businesses. Locals are generally disturbed by the overcrowded neighbourhoods and move out into suburbs or other parts of the city where parking, local services and tranquillity are more accessible. This resulting exodus produces a mono‑functional city centre that loses its urban character by processes of “museumification” or “Disneyfication” (McNeil, 1999). Boštjan Bugarič (2006) notes that the “touristification” of cities diminishes the quality of life and public presence of its locals. These processes and the negative effects of tourist congestion have been described by scholars analysing these effects on locals’ attitudes (see Gilbert & Clark, 1997; Deichmann, 2002) and visitors (see Simpson, 1999; Riganti & Nijkamp, 2008). Published studies (see Johnson, 1995; Cooper & Morpeth, 1998; Hoffman & Musil, 1999; Simpson, 1999; Deichmann, 2002; Hoffman & Musil, 2009) support the assumption resulting from this location analysis of tourist and local infrastructures and the author’s experiences on location: Prague suffers from many more of these symptoms. In Prague the presence of tourists is stronger in the central areas, causing reported situations of tourist congestion and the almost complete withdrawal of local users and infrastructures. In Vienna only restricted parts of the centre are completely appropriated by tourists. This raises the question of why one city can resist the pressure of a similar number of tourists but another cannot. This paper focuses on the major differences in tourist space usage between the two cities and reviews the published cases of social and spatial tensions caused by urban tourism. Using a comparable model of urban tourist space usage, it offers an explanation for why the same number of visitors is causing more problems in Prague than in Vienna. 2 Tourists in Vienna and Prague Both cities attract the same type of tourists from the same countries, with more domestic tourists visiting the Austrian capital, compensated by more Russian, Polish and American tourists in Prague (Table 1). Both are equally popular destinations for cultural tourism as “weekend city visits” – with many cheap flights now connecting to their airports in the past decade. And with both being former capitals of empires they share a strong historical atmosphere and the typical urbanity of Mitteleuropa on which they both promote most of their tourism. Prague flourished in the era of the Holy Roman Empire, especially under Charles IV in the fourteenth century and later under Rudolf II in the sixteenth century. Vienna, on the other hand, became the capital of the Holy Roman Empire after Prague, in the fifteenth century; but lost its cultural importance during the Turkish wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As the capital of the Habsburg Empire, and later of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire, Vienna again flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, right up until the First World War. The two cities survived the two world wars relatively untouched, thus preserving a heritage that is very well marketable today. Vienna was able develop in a steady political and economic environment foll (...truncated)