The Netherlands’ capital no longer wants to welcome Brits looking for a weekend of partying and excess so this week it launched a campaign to keep them away. The campaign video is intended to have a deterrent effect and appear in UK search engines when searching for specific terms such as ‘Amsterdam bachelorette party’, ‘Amsterdam cheap hotels’ or ‘pub crawl’ [ir a vários bares na mesma noite] in Amsterdam”.
The video shows a young man being arrested while warning of the consequences of excessive alcohol and drug use: fines and a criminal record. “Tourists are still welcome, but only if they don’t behave inappropriately and make too much noise. As a city, we’re saying, ‘We’d rather not have that, so don’t come,'” said Sofyan Mbarki, the city’s deputy mayor, as quoted by The Guardian.
It starts online in the UK but should be extended to the city itself, with posters and screens calling for good behavior in one of Europe’s most touristy spots and where the people who live there say they are satiated with the lack of politeness of tourists who travel only from the parties.
The campaign is part of a series of measures to encourage more cultural (and conscious) tourism. The ban on cannabis consumption in public spaces, which came into force in May, and the limitation of the opening hours of pubs and prostitution establishments had already been announced.
In 2021, the city’s mayor, Femke Halsman, had already indicated her willingness to close cafe doors to tourists, but the measure was ultimately not applied.