What's Next? Parties in the Baltics

Bachelor Parties in Prague

A little over a decade ago, young Britons grew tired of toasting grooms- and brides-to-be in a local pub, and began organizing wilder celebrations out of town. 'The guys would go to Nottingham, and the girls would go to Brighton,' said Darren Lancaster, a manager of RedSeven Leisure, a British company that caters to so-called stag and hen parties.
Affordable flights arrived in the 1990's, and those roaming, rowdy, weekend-long parties moved to Dublin, Barcelona and Prague. After a few years of tolerating British visitors with a seemingly limitless capacity for alcohol - and the antisocial behavior that typically accompanies it - many bars in those cities have banned stag parties altogether.
Boozing in the Baltics

The latest destinations on the stag party map are cities like Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn - the respective capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which all joined the European Union last year - because low-cost airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet have started flying there direct from London. And more importantly, at less than a pound a pint, beer is cheap.
Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is now the third most popular destination for RedSeven, which sends stag parties to 50 locations. 'It's very much what Prague was 10 years ago,' Mr. Lancaster said.

That's not such welcome news locally. The Baltic Times, an English-language newspaper based in Riga, reported in November on 'the widespread fear that, once a low-fare airline opens a route into an Eastern or Central European city, British stag parties will help turn the place into a nightmare.'

The largest companies that organize stag party trips claim to avoid typical "lager lout" behavior by planning daytime activities that delay the start of each day's drinking until at least lunchtime. The former occupiers of former Soviet states left behind some serious toys for boys to play with, like shooting ranges stocked with Red Army firearms.

Those Baltic cities offer medieval charm and centuries of history. But another attraction carries more weight with stag party clientele. "Wherever you look, there's a stunning woman," said Phil Teubler, managing director of Baltic Holidays. "The guys go out there and they absolutely cannot believe it. It's like a dream."

Mr. Lancaster says women in the Baltics may have been curious about British tourists a few years ago, when they were fairly rare. But, he said, that's changed. "They'll tolerate them; they'll speak to them and chat to them," he said, "but that's it."