De Wallen neighborhood in Amsterdam.
(Credit: Sylvain Sonnet/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images)
Amsterdam (CNN) --
It's barely dark on a chilly Saturday afternoon in early December.
But Amsterdam's Red Light District is already starting to heat up.
Bursts of applause resound from crowded bars during World Cup soccer matches.
Puffs of marijuana emanate from the cafeterias.
Hordes of tourists crawl through the narrow streets, making it difficult, if not impossible, for a car or even a bicycle to pass through.
Some men stop to ask the lingerie-clad sex workers posing behind brothel windows about their services.
But the vast majority simply stare or gawk as they walk by.
At an establishment along the Oudezijds Voorburgwal canal, a middle-aged man dressed in jeans and a baseball cap takes a photo of his friend against the window, despite signs prohibiting photography.
They switch places for another photo, then leave, laughing.
It's just another day at one of the world's most infamous resorts.
But if city officials have their way, the neighborhood of De Wallen, as it's known locally, will eventually attract visitors who come to appreciate its unique heritage, architecture and culture rather than its vices.
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Amsterdam considers banning cannabis cafes for tourists
In the latest move in an ongoing effort to improve Amsterdam's image, reduce noisy visitor behavior, and improve livability and safety for residents, city officials recently announced policy proposals "to limit growth and the inconvenience of tourism" and combat overcrowding.
This latest round of proposed measures includes initiatives targeting problematic tourist behavior, such as limiting the number of river cruises;
implement earlier closing times for window bars, clubs, and brothels;
and a ban on smoking cannabis in certain parts of the city.
Another part of the initiative focuses on "actively discouraging international visitors with plans to 'go crazy' in Amsterdam", which has been dubbed as the "stay away" campaign.
"Some companies abuse the image of Amsterdam to sell it as a place of 'unlimited possibilities,'" Deputy Mayor Sofyan Mbarki said in a statement.
“For this reason, some groups of visitors conceive it as a city where anything goes.
This type of tourism, as well as the offers directed specifically to these groups, are not considered desirable by the Municipal Executive”.
The policy proposals, which were announced on November 30 and are part of a broader initiative to address mass tourism, must be voted on by the city council on December 21 before they can be enacted.
But some in the Amsterdam tourism sector are already on board.
"We should get rid of the image of sex, drugs and rock and roll," says Remco Groenhuijzen, general manager of the Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Center.
"It's not bad that we have a little bit of a city on edge. But that's not a free [pass] to come here and misbehave."
"The Right Balance"
Earlier this year a ban on the sale of alcohol was introduced in the Red Light District of Amsterdam.
(Credit: Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock)
Groenhuijzen says that most members of Luxury Hotels of Amsterdam, an association of 24 four- and five-star hotels of which he is president, generally approve of the city's attempt to burnish its reputation through various measures that attempt to address (and prevent) the unpleasant consequences of the bad behavior of tourists.
"As hoteliers, we believe that a city should be livable, because that's when it's good to come here," says Groenhuijzen.
"That was always the strength of Amsterdam, to have the right balance."
But in recent years, especially as post-pandemic tourism has come back with a vengeance, overtourism has upset that balance alarmingly, especially in well-visited neighborhoods like De Wallen.
By 2023, Amsterdam is projected to surpass 18 million overnight visitors, a number that is nearly 22 times its population of approximately 822,000.
By 2025, that number could reach 23 million, plus another 24 to 25 million daily visits.
When the number of overnight visitors reaches 18 million, the city council is "obliged to intervene" based on a 2021 ordinance called "Amsterdam Tourism in Balance".
During an interview in the cheerful downtown offices of Amsterdam & Partners, the city's public-private marketing nonprofit, director Geerte Udo estimates that 10-15% of Amsterdam's tourism industry is in the Red Light District.
But combine disruptive tourists with an overcrowding problem, and on weekends "it's really uninhabitable in the old city center these days," says Udo, noting that certain streets are particularly problematic.
Udo described the city's tourism reboot as a multi-layered approach with specific campaigns designed to target unique groups of visitors, while rebranding Amsterdam as a destination whose attractions go far beyond brothels and cannabis cafes, in addition to making the city safer and more livable for residents and more attractive to visitors.
One specific measure, for example, would target day visitors, many of whom drive from the Netherlands, as well as neighboring countries, including Germany, and sleep in their cars rather than stay in a hotel.
When talking about the plans, Udo often avoids using the term "Red Light District".
"Now it's become a kind of theme park name for a neighborhood," he explains.
"And if we...want to change perception, you shouldn't keep talking about the Red Light District if you'd rather the red lights go out."
The project of an erotic center is still on hold
Tourists throng the neighborhood in this photo taken before the pandemic in March 2019. (Credit: Peter Dejong/AP)
Those infamous lights, for now, continue to shine.
But, in perhaps the most controversial aspect of the city's tourism restart, they may be toned down next year depending on the status of a proposed "erotic center" that would move window brothels to a single building located on the outskirts of the city. city.
The project was originally conceived as an "erotic hotel" by the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, who was elected in 2018 as the first female mayor of the Dutch capital.
It has won the approval of some groups, including various political parties, and has been heavily criticized by others, particularly sex workers.
They claim that removing the visibility from the windows makes their work less safe, and that locating the center in a remote area of the city, away from the more popular tourist areas, would hurt their business.
Amsterdam's plan to open "sex worker hotels" to get them out of the popular Red Light District
Jeroen de Jong, COO of Amsterdam Red Light District Tours, whose app offers self-guided tours of the district (in-person tours were banned in early 2020), predicted that the erotic hub "will fail and become a catastrophic financial business." ".
De Jong also noted that there are a couple other areas around Amsterdam with window brothels.
“Sex workers already have the option of working in different places in the capital,” she said by email.
It is anyone's guess when the 15,000-square-foot multi-story center, which has a commissioned architect already on board for the project, will officially open.
Following fierce opposition to the first eight proposed sites, the city delayed the decision and may expand the list to include additional sites, Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported.
Nonetheless, Halsema remains determined.
"I hope that an erotic center can be created that has some class and distinction and that is not a place where only petty criminals meet, the most vulnerable women, but also people who are not ashamed to go," he told the outlet. DutchNews.NL this fall.
"Let it be"
Dutch brothels reopened after covid in July 2020. (Credit: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)
The future of the Red Light District may not be clear, but for now, business as usual.
And for many of the workers and customers who frequent adult novelty shops, cannabis cafes, porno shows, and other neighborhood businesses, so it should be.
"[The government] just wants to push everything back, move it, give all these fancy houses back to rich people," says Linda Nap, an employee at a sex accessory shop in De Wallen, among a steady stream of customers.
Instead of spending money on anti-tourism campaigns, de Jong said, the city would be much better off increasing its police presence in the Red Light District, a common request among neighborhood residents and businessmen.
"A frequently heard complaint ... is, 'We don't want more rules, we want more cops and enforcers,'" he says.
Nap, who says many of her clients are sex workers, says the city's continued crackdowns will strip the neighborhood of its unique spirit that, like the profession around which it's built, has thrived for centuries.
And while he understands residents' frustrations with crowding and noise, he maintains that the realities of living in the neighborhood have always been very visible.
"[The sex industry] has been here since the 17th century: people don't just come here for the canals and the tulips," says Nap.
"Leave it at that. If you have a problem, move somewhere else."
Blane Bachelor is a Florida-born, Amsterdam-based journalist who covers travel, aviation and outdoor adventures.
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