Locals have little confidence in Amsterdam's new plans to limit tourism

Amsterdam residents, coffeeshop owners, and entrepreneurs have little confidence that the plans the city presented on Wednesday to reduce tourism will have the desired effect. They think that some of the measures are just more of the same story they’ve heard for a decade, and others will be impossible to enforce, Parool reports.

On Wednesday, alderman Sofyan Mbarki presented the city’s Visitor Economy 2035 vision, with plans to combat the ever-increasing crowds and nuisance. Measures include a ban on smoking weed on the streets in parts of the city center, closing catering establishments and brothels earlier, banning some bachelor parties, a campaign against drinking tourism, asking hotels to focus less on short stays, and aiming to spread the crowds across the city.

These marginal measures do not touch the core of the problem, Dingeman Coumou, chairman of the d’Oude Stadt community center and board member of the Vrienden van de Amsterdamse Binnenstad Association, said to the newspaper. “Amsterdam must be there for the residents, but these plans will not solve the crowds.”

He highlighted some measures that he thinks would contribute little to nothing. “Measures against hoteliers are not going to help much.” There’s no incentive for them to take fewer guests. “The spread of the crowds does not yield anything: We have heard that story for ten years. And the advertising campaign abroad should have happened much sooner,” Coumou said. A ban on cannabis use on the street will only help with proper enforcement. “So many things already need to be enforced, and that is already not happening. Then you make a fool of yourself.”

Entrepreneurs also think enforcement is the main bottleneck. “More and more rules are added while we already have problems that cannot be solved,” Frits Voet of the business association BIZ Burgwallen said. “A smoking weed ban has the opposite effect. With the alcohol ban, we already see at signs saying no drinking allowed, people taking selfies with a drink in hand, which then goes all over the world. Also, it has long been proven that weed smokers are not the troublemakers.”

The early closure of bars, clubs, restaurants, and prostitution is discrimination if it doesn’t apply to all parts of the city, he added. “In addition, if everything closes at the same time, everyone will be on the street at the same time, and that will cause an even bigger problem. For sex workers, it is less safe to make them go home with their earnings at three in the morning when there’s no public transport.”

Joachim Helms of the Association of Cannabis Retailers thinks that banning weed smoking on the streets could improve the quality of life in the city center. “But, of course, everything stands or falls with sufficient enforcement, and that is sometimes lacking. We see that with the alcohol ban,” Helms said. Early closures would be a “total failure,” he added. “Certainly, in combination with the weed smoking ban. In that case, street dealers will replace the coffeeshops, which will have the opposite effect.” It would also make the street smoking ban unenforceable. “You have to give people a place to smoke their joint.”

Lony Scharenborg of the entrepreneurs association De 9 Straatjes told Parool that the new rules would cause more problems for the rest of the canal belt. “In De 9 Straatjes, you find the more upscale hotels and that should not be ruined by massive nightlight crowds and pub crawls. That is disastrous for every area.”