Amsterdam residents sue city over mass tourism

The municipality of Amsterdam is facing legal action because residents believe that the city is not doing enough to combat mass tourism. The citizens’ initiative “Amsterdam has a Choice” has raised €50,000 from locals in recent months and, with the support of 12 other residents’ organizations, is filing a lawsuit against the city on Monday.

In 2021, the municipality set a bylaw limiting the number of tourist overnight stays in the city to 20 million per year. Despite this, there were 22.9 million overnight stays last year, and that number is still rising. The initiators of the lawsuit argue that the municipality is not complying with the rules and is not doing enough to reduce the number of tourists in the city.

“Overnight stays have been exceeding the agreed 20 million for three years without the municipality taking effective measures,” said Jasper van Dijk, one of the initiators.

The municipality did take measures, but according to the initiators, these were not effective enough. For example, the city increased the tourist tax and halved the number of river and sea cruises. There is also a ban on building new hotels. Still, in May, it was announced that tourism in Amsterdam is still growing, albeit less rapidly than before.

Amsterdam has the highest tourist tax in Europe, at 12.5 percent. Nevertheless, the initiators believe that this tax should be hiked again. “Amsterdam could use the significant additional revenue from the increased tourist tax to buy properties to help with the housing shortage or to rid the city of the street litter created in part by mass tourism,” Van Dijk said. “If the municipality implements this substantial increase in tourist tax, it will generate more revenue than the combined costs of all the plans from the previous Amsterdam coalition agreements.”