Amsterdam continues its fight against mass tourism. After leading a campaign to try to keep young partygoers away from its famous red light district and drastically increasing its tourist tax, the Dutch capital has adopted a radical new measure to combat overtourism: banning the construction of new hotels in the city .
Through this measure, the local government wants the number of available beds to no longer increase. “We want to make and maintain the city livable for residents and visitors. This means: no excessive tourism, no new hotels and no more than 20 million tourist hotel nights per year,” he detailed in a press release.
A new hotel in Amsterdam can only be built if another hotel closes. In addition, this new hotel will need to be of better quality, “for example more modern and/or more sustainable”, specifies the municipality, which encourages hoteliers “to choose a location outside the center”. However, this new rule does not apply to hotels under construction and those having obtained a building permit, of which there are 26 to date.
Limit the number of tourists and regulate hard drugs
The limit of 20 million overnight stays stems from a popular initiative called “Amsterdam has a choice”. No fewer than 30,000 Amsterdammers have called for control of visitor flows in the capital, known worldwide for its coffee shops.
With this fight against mass tourism, Amsterdam also wants to discourage unwelcome tourists coming “to go wild”, particularly by consuming drugs and alcohol.
A few days ago, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema expressed her desire to regulate the market for hard drugs like cocaine and MDMA to combat drug trafficking and its “disastrous” consequences on the city's economy and security. . “One could imagine that cocaine could be obtained from pharmacists or via a medical model,” she said in an interview with AFP.