Amsterdam banning the construction of new hotels anywhere in the city

The political leadership of Amsterdam announced plans to essentially ban the construction of new hotels in the entire city. There will be some exceptions to the policy, the mayor and aldermen said in a statement on Wednesday. Despite seven years of tighter policies towards new hotels, two dozen are still in the planning stage at the moment.

There was already a ban on constructing new hotels in many areas of the city, the entire city will no become a "no area" for new hotels. There will still be a "new-for-old rule," which allows for a new hotel to be built when another hotel located elsewhere closes.

Amsterdam will only allow this if the number of guests accommodated also remains the same, meaning a small hotel with only a handful of rooms cannot be replaced by a larger facility. "It is preferable that the new hotel is located outside the center. In addition, there must be a qualitative improvement of the hotel, such as modernization or sustainability," the city stated.

The municipality aims to keep the number of tourist overnight stays below 20 million annually. In 2023, there were 20,665,000 hotel stays. This does not count people who stayed in holiday homes, bed and breakfasts, or on cruises. The limit of 20 million overnight stays a year came from a petition signed by 30,000 Amsterdammers who called for more control on the tourism sector.

"However, despite the strict hotel policy, new hotels are still under construction and a number of new hotels are being added. This is due to projects that were already permitted," as well as locations that are still zoned for hotels.

"The number of hotels still in the pipeline in this way has decreased in recent years. When the overnight accommodation policy was established in 2017, an inventory counted 58 ongoing initiatives. There are currently 26."