‘Stay Away’: Amsterdam is fed up with drunk foreign tourists and wants them to stay away | Interior

The campaign starts in Great Britain and focuses mainly on men aged 18 to 35 years. Tourists who enter terms such as ‘cheap hotel Amsterdam’ and ‘pub crawl Amsterdam’ in search engines get a warning with the advertisements that shows what can happen if you cause a nuisance or drink alcohol, such as getting a fine, a criminal record, hospitalization and health damage.

The municipality hopes that by warning of the risks and possible consequences, part of the tourists will be discouraged from coming. “Visitors remain welcome, but not if they misbehave and cause nuisance,” says alderman Sofyan Mbarki (Economic Affairs and Approach to the City Center) about the campaign. “Then we as a city say: rather not, stay away. Amsterdam is already doing a lot when it comes to measures against excessive tourism and nuisance, and we also go a lot further than other major cities in Europe. We have to do even more in the coming years if we want to give tourism a place in our city in a sustainable way.”

In addition to the Stay Away campaign, the How to Amsterdam campaign will also start this month, aimed at visitors who are already in Amsterdam. This campaign tells visitors what is and what is not allowed in the city, for example with signs about the prohibition of urinating in public and public drunkenness. Mbarki: “Amsterdam is a metropolis and that includes bustle and liveliness, but in order to keep our city livable, we now opt for limitations instead of irresponsible growth.”

The discouragement campaign is part of it package of measures that the city council adopted at the end of 2022, which also includes the smoking ban and the ban on bachelor parties in the city center. The Stay Away campaign will be evaluated and possibly further developed in the coming months and will therefore focus on tourists from other European countries and parts of the Netherlands.