Urbex in the V4 countries: analysis of popularity trends

Urbex, or urban exploration, is an increasingly prominent term associated with non-conformist leisure activities and an alternative way of exploring specific places. As urbex activities are located in a grey area and authentic urbex is limited by its own rules, it is difficult to quantify it directly in terms of analysing its popularity across countries or regions. This makes it challenging to empirically confirm the general view that urbex is growing in popularity. The aim of this paper is therefore to indirectly assess the interest in urbex in the Visegrad Four countries between January 2014 and July 2024 and to specify it for NUTS3 regions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The methodology combines mul-tiple data sources with the analytical tool Google Trends and the specification and compar-ison of recalculated numerical information related to the term urbex and urban exploration. The findings confirm the assumption of increasing interest in urbex in the V4 countries, with the highest relative popularity of this type of modern exploration in the Czech Republic