Prague towers after 20 years without typical wooden signs: Prague will create its own
“Why doesn’t the sale of tourist classic stamps work on historic towers?” collectors ask. The situation is deadlocked. On January 1, 2021, the Prague Towers passed from the administration of the Prague City Museum to the care of Prague City Tourism. The municipal company decided to change the tourist design of Prague and stopped selling round wooden tourist stamps. The manager of the Rýmař company Turisticke zmánky s.r.o. David Holub therefore wrote an indignant letter to the city company Prague City Tourism in April after a year of communication.
Censorship or necessity?
Since I didn’t get a reply until October, she decided to publish the letter now for the Tourist Stamps website. David Holub is particularly upset that the twenty-year tradition of selling tourist stamps, which are available throughout the Czech Republic, even in some places abroad, has come to an end. The reason why stamps on the Prague towers can no longer be found is the effort to unify all Prague souvenirs by Prague City Tourism.
“Even though the motive may be laudable, the execution can be characterized, after a long series of meetings and emails, only as bureaucratic will,” David is angry. Moreover, according to him, tacky commercial souvenirs in the form of matryoshka dolls will remain in Prague anyway. He compares the effort to control appearance to totalitarian censorship.
However, the municipal business company Prague City Tourism is resisting, on the basis of a new tourism strategy, it intends to change the visual image of Prague. In addition, they disagreed with the original stamp issuer. “We created a new stamp design with top creators for the objects we manage, but we did not agree on cooperation with Tourist Stamps, which we of course respect,” Klára Janderová, press spokesperson for Prague City Tourism, tells Bleska.
In addition, the company wants to cultivate tourism and the presentation of Prague. “Our company is a trading company 100% owned by the capital city of Prague. We create our own editions of suvrs, on which we work exclusively with top local creators,” says the press spokesperson. In short, the company is said to conclude collaborations that are commercially advantageous for it or cultivate tourism.
The end of a tradition
Tourist stamps were created 25 years ago as an original wooden burnt souvenir, with which the collecting game is played and which serves as a promotion and marketing tool. “They depict cultural and natural monuments – and they cannot be obtained anywhere else than on them, which is the basic motivation for collecting them,” says David Holub.
There are more than 2,700 famous tourist spots in the Czech Republic, the creation of which is decided by the collectors themselves in an online vote. There are around fifty thousand of those registered in the Czech Republic alone. “Collectors can easily get tourist stamps at 10,000 monuments in Europe, but not only at the Prague Towers?” asks David Holub.
They said they did not want to change the graphics, as it is suitable for all monuments. “However, it has never happened to us that our partner – moreover, in the position of an employee of a budgetary organization – argued about his own aesthetic requirements, and when they were not met, he damaged his own institution by boycotting our product,” says the company’s CEO David Holub in conclusion.
This is how the moon sets behind Petřín. Dušan Gejdos
Oldtown Hall.
Author: Prague City Tourism