While Venice is targeting its cruise industry as a way of tackling overtourism, the sector is just one of several areas Amsterdam is reviewing to deal with its own issues.
The City of Amsterdam has released figures showing that in 2023, there were 9.4 million visitors to the city who spent 22.1 million nights in it.
The number of visitors remains below the 10.2 million visitors the city received in 2019 before the Covid pandemic, but they spent more time there than in 2019 when the number of nights recorded was 21.8 million.
Just as the tourists are returning in large numbers, so are the problems, with overcrowding in the city centre, antisocial elements and the use of home-holiday rental sites such as Airbnb driving up property prices for locals all featuring on the list of complaints.
These tourism numbers are predicted to continue growing, with between 22.9 million and 25.4 million visitors expected in 2024 while up to 26.6 million are expected in 2026.
Managing the growth
Alderman Sofyan Mbarki (economic affairs and inner city approach) said it is this predicted growth that the city of Amsterdam is trying to manage for the benefit of both residents and tourists.
He added: “After the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone has started travelling en masse again and tourists are finding our city again.
“All international trends indicate that this will only increase in the coming years. It is precisely for this reason that the measures we apply to limit tourism and its consequences remain as necessary as ever.”
The Vision on Tourism in Amsterdam 2035 report is key to this ambition, having been launched at the end of 2022 and picking up on work that had already been achieved in the City Centre Approach.
To date measures include reducing the number of tourism beds by tightening measures and the forced registration of those offering private accommodation as well as the tightening of hotel policy to slow the growth of hotel rooms before stopping it entirely.
This year has also seen the city’s tax on overnight hotel stays increase to 12.5% of the price of accommodation while cruise ship passengers will need to pay an €11 tax, up from €8.
In addition, the shopping diversity zoning plan in the city centre forces shops to focus on residents, not tourists, while international marketing campaigns have targeted hen and stag groups with messages that they are not welcome.
The start of 2024 also saw a new ban on coaches weighing 7.5 tonnes or more entering the city centre, apart from via one particular corridor.
Instead coaches are now directed to parking areas on the borders of the city where it is hoped public transport will connect travellers with the city centre.
Meanwhile, the sea cruise sector has been hit by new rules that will reduce the number of ships mooring at the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam from 190 to a maximum of 100 per year by 2026, with additional ships sent to Rotterdam.
Only one berth will be in operation and ships will be required to use shore power by 2027, further cutting pollution, while the city intends to close the terminal at its current location in Veemkade by 2035.
Alderman Hester van Buren (Port) said: ”The city council wants a liveable, clean and sustainable city.
“Sea cruise is a polluting form of tourism and contributes to crowds and emission in the city. By limiting sea cruises, requiring shore power and aiming for the cruise terminal (PTA) to move from its current location in 2035, the council is responsibly implementing the council’s proposal to stop sea cruises.”
Limited powers
While Ramon Van Der Storm, the managing director of city-centre canal cruise tours operator the Blue Boat Company, is glad to see a long-term plan for Amsterdam’s tourism, he is doubtful that it will achieve much.
He argued that the city council can only really control the number of tourists arriving by sea and cruise river ships and it is now doing so, with the cruise ship reduction expected to reduce visitor numbers by 300,000 per year.
Van Der Storm added there was little the council can do about overcrowding in the museum quarter where three of the city’s biggest cultural attractions, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijke Museum and the Moco Museum Amsterdam, draw large crowds into the city’s museum quarter.
He also argued that tourists are being blamed for problems that are not of their creation - in particular the pricing out of local residents which has often been attributed to home rental sites such as Airbnb.
Van Der Storm said: “Due to the gentrification of the city, it’s getting more and more expensive to live in Amsterdam and unaffordable for the middle classes – tourism isn’t really part of the problem, that’s just an economic problem.
“If anything goes wrong in the city, you simply blame the tourists.”
Instead, he said a drive to build more houses in Amsterdam would ease the problem while having more city council staff dedicated to the future of tourism in the city would also help.
ETOA (European Tourism Association) CEO Tom Jenkins agreed that, as in Venice, gentrification of any city is a common occurrence and cannot be blamed on tourists.
He also questioned the reasoning behind the coach ban which he argued could simply cause more congestion as tourists take taxis to complete their journeys into the city centre.
Jenkins added the move to discourage certain tourists who are attracted to Amsterdam by the promise of sex and drugs could also be harder than imagined.
He said: “Cities get the tourists they deserve; you don’t get the ones you want. In Amsterdam’s case, is it possible to go after better clients?
“You can’t close down all the hostels and you can’t close down the cheap bars; you made your bed and now you need to lie in it.”
Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, but if Amsterdam is experiencing a tourism hangover at the moment then perhaps it needs to do more to mitigate its actions in the past.