Partying tourists in Amsterdam are being sent a sobering new message: antisocial behaviour will be met with on-the-spot fines. The Enjoy and Respect campaign has been launched jointly by the city’s marketing body, council, police and hospitality industries, in an effort to point out that even in a city that is all about freedom, nuisance tourism has a price.
Urinating in a canal, for instance, risks a fine of €140; public drunkenness will cost €95. Disturbing the peace in public places or dropping litter – in theory, even a cigarette butt – could also cost €140. Adverts on the street and on social media help to underline that doing the right thing is free.
The campaign is targeting the city’s most troublesome tourists: British and Dutch men aged 18-34, who visit “to go wild and party all night”. By pointing out existing fines and providing police and enforcement officers with mobile, on-the-spot payment equipment, it hopes to hit them financially.
“It is a daring campaign because it’s about behaviour,” says Amsterdam Marketing’s CEO Frans van der Avert. “A lot of other campaigns are about forbidding things and that doesn’t work. People are welcome here but have to treat the city and the citizens with respect.”
Van der Avert said the campaign involved consultation with police, tour operators, residents, psychologists plus the groups that cause the most nuisance. It discovered the groups are mostly on a budget – and respond well to clear language and financial penalties.
The €225,000, six-month campaign starts with online adverts on booking and weather websites, plus physical adverts at airports. It includes alerts sent via geofencing – targeted using GPS – to this group’s mobile phones on social media when they enter the red light district, central train station and nightlife streets – something Van der Avert says is consent-based and “anonymised” so as not to breach new data protection laws.
Two weeks ago, a new city coalition government announced a raft of strict measures to deal with the so-called Disneyfication of Amsterdam, an subject which was a major issue in the election campaign. As well as banning Airbnb-type rental in certain areas, diverting cruise ships and banning touring cars, the city will raise tourist taxes to 7% to raise €105m a year extra for enforcement and more police on the streets.
Pim Evers, chairman of the Amsterdam branch of the Dutch Hospitality Association, KHN, said its 1,800 members contributed €10,000 to the campaign, as a way to welcome tourists but encourage better behaviour. “It seems like everything is possible – and that’s the thing we have to change,” he said. “Yes, you can look at the ladies and buy some sex; you can have a joint and alcohol. But please be quieter, and don’t leave rubbish or urinate on the street.”
He added that some in the hospitality industry support the campaign because they worry about the effect of higher tourist taxes and regulation on their trade. However, Stephen Hodes, who started independent thinktank Amsterdam in Progress, believes that only limiting tourist numbers and flights will solve the problem. This comes after hotel nights spent in the Netherlands rose by 13% last year, to 17.8 million – with four in 10 travelling to Amsterdam.
“It’s a city where freedom is important and you have to accept a degree of nuisance, but it’s now out of hand,” Hodes said. “The crux of the problem is that there are too many tourists. The only thing to do is to take radical measures, otherwise it’s a consumption ghetto, not a city where people live.”