The latest target in Amsterdam’s decade-long battle against overtourism is an unlikely one: river cruises.
City finance chief Hester van Buren announced this month that the city wants to halve the number of river cruises by 2028, from the current total of 2125. Councillors have already voted to close an ocean cruise terminal in the city centre.
But local businesses have suggested visitors who take river boat tours from Amsterdam are not typically nuisance tourists. The 271,000 people are often older, enjoy a night at a hotel and spend an estimated €63 million.
However, it is all part of around 100 measures to try to stem tourism, which exploded after late mayor Eberhard van der Laan brokered a deal with Airbnb to officially allow holiday home rentals in 2014 – and take a cut of the tax.
Since 2023, smoking cannabis outside has been banned in the city centre, there are restrictions on alcohol sales, pubs have earlier closing times in the red light district, and the city plans to close 100 brothel windows and move them to an “erotic centre”. City tax is up and a “stay away” plan to dissuade nuisance young Brits hit the global headlines and will be expanded to other nations such as the French, Germans and Dutch themselves.
Despite all this, hotel overnights rose to over 20 million last year (not including holiday rentals) and although there’s an official ban on new hotels, 26 are being built. The Dutch came up with the word “overtourism” in 2017 and it’s still an everyday term.
Tourists arriving in Venice on Thursday were welcomed by ticket controllers as the city became the first in the world to charge an entrance fee.
The hotly debated measure, targeted at day-trippers, kicked in at 8.30am. Most of the day-trippers arriving at Santa Lucia station came pre-prepared with a QR code proving they had payed the €5 toll, but the initiative sparked confusion among people staying in hotels who, even though they are exempt, were unaware they would still have to endure the rigmarole of going online to confirm their exemption.
A steward guided Yvonne McKenna and Ken Mehan, who had just arrived on an overnight train from Vienna, through the process, which took about 10 minutes.
“I knew about the new tax and I knew about the exemption but I didn’t know we would be doing this when we arrived,” said McKenna. “It does seem to take a long time...imagine if you weren’t so up on all the technology?”
Others were totally oblivious to the new measure. “What fee?” asked Elizabeth from America, before being taught how to pay online.
The initiative has caused much division in Venice, with opponents arguing that it is against the principle of freedom of movement and will do nothing to meaningfully address over-tourism.
Some who live in other tourist hotspots sympathise with their plight, but support the fee.
Jana Plevova, from Prague, is spending five nights in the city and so is exempt as she already pays a nightly tourist tax, but said she would have no problem paying €5 to enter for the day.
“I come from Prague which is also suffering from over-tourism so paying €5 is not that much for trying to preserve this beauty,” she said.
Tourists queue in front of the Santa Lucia railway station as they wait to buy tickets, as visitors entering the UNESCO World Heritage site for one day have to buy a five-euro ($5.3) ticket, in Venice. Photograph: Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images
Only about one in ten people present in Venice have paid a €5 fee to access the city, Ansa reported today.
Municipal workers of Venice stand next to an information totem for entering the city, in front of the Santa Lucia railway station in Venice. Photograph: Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images
The daily Le Parisien ran a front page on the Venice scheme drawing comparisons with the challenges of over-tourism at some sites in France.
For example, the Calanques de Sugiton, in the Calanques national park near Marseille, has put in place a quota reservation system for hikers and swimmers at peak moments in the summer months to protect the ecosystem from erosion and overcrowding.
The paper cited an OpinionWay poll for Evaneos in which 60% of French people said they had suffered because of overtourism. Three quarters said they had given up on visiting a site because of overcrowding.
Éric Straumann, the mayor of the picturesque Alsace town of Colmar told the paper he was thinking about whether to introduce some kind of limited access to the Christmas market, which at weekends can reach 150,000 visitors in a town of 70,000 people.
There are islands in France which limit the number of daily visitors in the summer, for example the Île-de-Brehat in Brittany and at Porquerolles in the south. The Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy does not have quotas, but shuttle buses to the site have been limited and car-park reservations introduced.
‘A family used to live here’: The Spanish sticker rebellion battling tourist lets
Incensed after finding out his rental home of 10 years was about to become a tourist apartment, Dani Romero took to social media.
What followed swiftly snowballed into a movement, as residents in Málaga began plastering stickers – reading “A family used to live here” or “Go home” – outside tourist lets across the southern Spanish city.
“I didn’t mean to arm a revolution,” said Romero. “I’m just looking for a house to live in.”
At the core of what one Spanish broadcaster called “the sticker rebellion” is not a rejection of tourism, said Romero. Instead, as city residents grapple with a record number of tourists, it’s a cri de coeur for a more balanced approach that could allow for a better coexistence between residents and tourists.
NGO cautions about environmental impact of over-tourism
Transport & Environment, an NGO campaigning for cleaner transport, has warned about the impact of over-tourism.
”The current number of cruise ships globally is higher than it’s ever been, according to data from Clarksons Research,” the NGO said this morning.
“In 2022, Europe’s 218 cruise ships emitted as much sulphur oxides (SOx) as 1 billion cars, T&E’s Return of the Cruise report (2023) found,” it said, noting that “Europe’s cruise ships emit 8 million tonnes of CO2 every year.”
“In 2021 Venice banned large cruise ships from entering the city. This led to an 80% fall in SOX emissions from cruise ships. Barcelona is now Europe’s most polluted port,” Transport & Environment said.
Carlos Calvo Ambel, senior director for Non-Road Transport at T&E, added:
Europe’s luxury cruise ships emit as much toxic sulphur as a billion cars, and low-cost airlines are now polluting more CO2 than ever.
The uncontrolled growth of these two sectors must come to an end.
Cruise ships should plug into electricity if they want to dock, and the adoption of zero-emission fuels by cruises and airlines needs to happen fast. If cruise lines and airlines don’t radically change how they operate, they will increasingly be seen as unwanted guests.
Venice access fee: what is it and how much does it cost?
Angela Giuffrida
Why is this being introduced?
According to Simone Venturini, the city’s councillor for tourism, Venice “affixed itself” to mass tourism in the 1960s and since then visitor numbers have surged to the point that during the busiest periods of the year it attracts an average of 40,000 people a day.
That number has put pressure on the fragile lagoon, while pushing residents away from the main island. Brugnaro said he wanted to make Venice “livable” again.
However, the final push to enact the measure came after Unesco threatened last year to put Venice on its list of heritage sites in danger, citing mass tourism and rising water levels attributed to climate change.
‘Are we joking?’: Venice residents protest as city starts charging visitors to enter
Angela Giuffrida
Authorities in Venice have been accused of transforming the famous lagoon city into a “theme park” as a long-mooted entrance fee for day trippers comes into force.
Venice is the first major city in the world to enact such a scheme. The €5 (£4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
But several residents’ committees and associations have planned protests for Thursday, arguing that the fee will do nothing to resolve the issue.
“I can tell you that almost the entire city is against it,” claimed Matteo Secchi, who leads Venessia.com, a residents’ activist group. “You can’t impose an entrance fee to a city; all they’re doing is transforming it into a theme park. This is a bad image for Venice … I mean, are we joking?”
Once the heart of a powerful maritime republic, Venice’s main island has lost more than 120,000 residents since the early 1950s, driven away by a number of issues but predominantly a focus on mass tourism that has caused the population to be dwarfed by the thousands of visitors who crowd its squares, bridges and narrow walkways at the busiest times of the year.
