People who live in Prague prefer to spend less time shopping these days, a marketing expert said. Instead, they like to travel outside the city on the weekends.

As a result, several Prague shopping malls are having a hard time. The Šestka shopping mall near Prague’s Ruzyně Airport is having problems, as is Nové Butovice shopping mall and Eden in Vršovice, the newspaper reported.

Oversaturation of the market is one problem, as is poor layout inside new shopping centers and frequent ownership changes, said František Diviš, a spokesman for Incoma Research, a Czech marketing company.

Six new shopping malls opened in 2007. This year, another 12 are expected to open.

Investors should look at other regions in the Czech Republic to build new malls, Diviš said.

The problem is expected to get worse before it gets better, with some centers expected to close.

In that case, the malls could be used as storage or office buildings, real estate agents have said.