On a warm Friday night last month, the sun seemed to linger behind Amsterdam’s low, 16th-century skyline. In the Dutch capital’s red light district, the crush of tourists that was common before the COVID-19 pandemic had long since vanished, making it easy for a delivery worker to cycle past a handful of gawkers around the old town’s notorious storefronts.
While six German men in matching T-shirts ignored signs warning of a 95 euro (US$111) fine as they swilled beers on a nearby footbridge, they were the exception. Mostly, only small groups of sedate strollers were about on this midsummer evening.
Centuries before its more lurid attractions took hold, Amsterdam was already a tourist draw. As far back as 1345, when a communion wafer at a local church apparently proved indestructible, pilgrims flocked to see the miracle host. In modern times, decidedly less spiritual activities have drawn millions to the city’s quaint, canal-lined quarters.
Illustration: Constance Chou
However, noise, garbage and violence followed.
The city was already scrambling to find ways to restrain the tourist trade before the pandemic struck. Hefty fines for public drinking, tight restrictions on short-term rentals and outright bans on certain types of shops were implemented — but more visitors kept coming. By 2019, their numbers approached 9 million — more than 10 per resident.
Then it all stopped. For months, tourists where nowhere to be found as borders were sealed tight. Later, as infection waves receded, only a trickle returned. Overall, Amsterdam’s commercial establishments have registered almost 25 percent fewer visitors since COVID-19 first arrived.
Even in the red light district, the lack of drunken revelers remains apparent, despite many restrictions having been lifted. Locals wander wide-eyed through a part of town they rarely visit, amazed by its architectural beauty.
Among city officials, this tiny silver lining to a global health catastrophe planted a seed. While Amsterdam arguably needs tourism to survive, maybe the once-in-a-century pandemic could be used to remake how the city embraces it.
As it turned out, local officials in other tourist hot spots across Europe had the same idea.
Cities across the continent want to mold visits into shapes less onerous for residents, and perhaps more lucrative for business. Optimally, a virtuous circle can be created where loud partiers are supplanted by museumgoers with more money to spend — so the thinking goes.
Call it curated tourism.
“We met with representatives from Amsterdam, Barcelona and Florence during the pandemic, and all of us were thinking the same thing,” Prague Councilor for Culture and Tourism Hana Trestikova said. “Before COVID, overtourism had become almost unbearable, and COVID gave a pause to try and make some changes in what our cities represent, how we promote ourselves and how we must focus on quality of visits — not quantity.”
Not so long ago, these cities marketed themselves to everyone.
However, Amsterdam’s widely available cannabis and legal prostitution, Barcelona’s urban beaches and Prague’s famous beer halls increasingly attracted tourists who brought what Geerte Udo, director of amsterdam&partners, diplomatically called “negative effects.”
When much of Europe shut down last year, the medieval center of Amsterdam — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — took on “a breathtaking beauty,” said Udo, whose nonprofit serves as a civic booster.
The emptiness also revealed how few locals actually live there, she said.
“You feel it’s not more than a theater backdrop,” Udo added.
However, the pandemic also made clear how important tourist euros are to the livelihood of these cities. About 13 percent of Barcelona’s economy and 11 percent of Amsterdam’s jobs can be tied to visitors.
Lenia Marques, an assistant professor of cultural organization and management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said that cities are asking themselves: “Who is the tourist we’re inviting? Do we want this mass needing more hotels, or do we seek tourists more interested in our culture, a tourist who will appreciate more of what we have — and be able to spend more.”
In the past few years, Prague’s tourist problem started to resemble Amsterdam’s, Trestikova said.
The Czech capital was getting 8 million visitors a year, almost doubling between 2012 and 2019.
Like Amsterdam, most headed to the same neighborhoods, she said.
In Prague’s case, they clogged the Old Town Square and Charles Bridge.
“The city center is not a residential locality anymore, Trestikova said. “There are not many apartments, and those are largely occupied by expats or converted to hotels and short-term rentals. We need to focus on what residents need and show a city that’s not a film set, but alive with people from Prague.”
However, reshaping a city’s tourist trade is harder than just changing marketing firms.
Trestikova said that the biggest factors behind “low-quality” visits are not in the city’s control.
The cost of tickets on budget airlines, the number of Airbnb units and even the price of beer can only be changed at the national level, she said.
A spokesperson for the Czech Ministry of Regional Development said that taxes on alcohol and air travel are determined by the Czech parliament, but added that the Prague City Council can submit legislative proposals.
A bill from the city that would provide municipalities with more power to regulate short-term rentals is under consideration, he said.
Situated in the most-visited part of the second-most visited country in the world (after France), Barcelona faces a unique challenge when it comes to transforming tourism.
While the Spanish city’s “negative effects” are less extreme than those endured by Amsterdam or Prague, Barcelona Councilor for Tourism and Creative Industries Xavier Marce said that he wants to attract tourists interested in more than just its seaside location.
“When I visit New York, I am interested in what New Yorkers do,” he said. “It’s much better to have a tourist model linked to culture or science, because it means that there is a connection with the resident.”
Toward this end, Barcelona designed a network of bus stops to spread visitors more evenly around the city while also freezing new licenses for short-term rentals — the abuse of which has been a key cause of overtourism, Marce said.
Airbnb advertises “apartments, but they don’t check the legal status of those apartments,” Marce said. “It’s when we let them know that the apartment is illegal when they remove it immediately.” Airbnb spokesman Andreu Castellano said that the company has since 2018 worked with Barcelona officials to drop operators “who don’t respect the rules.”
“More than 7,000 bad actors have been removed as a result,” he said.
In Italy, some residents of Venice want to do the opposite of what Barcelona is trying.
“Spread out tourism? That’s worse,” said Melissa Conn, director of the nonprofit Save Venice. Conn said she prefers that visitors stick to Piazza San Marco so that residents can have the rest of the city to themselves.
Save Venice vice president Alberto Nardi agreed, but warned that tourism is critical to the city’s survival. An owner of a jewelry shop on the piazza, Nardi said that Venice’s population has been declining, its cost of living rising and non-tourism jobs vanishing.
Venice must “develop businesses that are different from tourism,” Nardi said.
For cities looking to change who comes calling (or their behavior), any successful effort requires an advertising campaign.
Amsterdam has prepared two such initiatives.
One announced by Amsterdam Deputy Mayor for Economic Affairs Victor Everhardt in June is aimed at culturally minded urban residents of nearby countries such as France and Belgium, and would begin when the risk of infection recedes further, both in those nations and the Netherlands. The other is intended to “stimulate desired behavior” by young men visiting from the UK.
“We’re focusing on people who have interest in culture in the broadest sense of the word,” he said. “We try to persuade them to visit all these other beautiful parts of the city.”
Even before COVID-19, Prague officials hired an agency that sought to persuade tourists “to come for more than two nights.”
During a short-lived summer reopening last year, the city introduced “Prague Unlocked,” a campaign aimed at a Czech audience, since foreign travelers were still rare.
It was a success. Usually just 15 percent of Prague’s tourists are domestic, compared with 20 percent in Vienna and almost 50 percent in Paris, but last year, the number of Czech visitors rose by 16 percent, with many staying in three and four-star hotels, Trestikova said.
Then there is the other side of the equation.
Amsterdam&partners is lobbying the Dutch government to impose a minimum price on plane tickets, while others want to ban Airbnb from the city altogether.
Barcelona last month instituted a new tax on stays in tourist establishments that goes to the municipal government. It could raise as much as 16.5 million euros annually, with the revenue used to promote less-visited neighborhoods, such as Poblenou or Gracia.
Technology is also being leveraged to redirect tourist flows.
“Amsterdam works with phone companies to know how many people are in certain areas, then they can take measures to stop more people coming in,” Marques said.
If areas become too crowded, visitors would receive a text message with an offer for an attraction in a different part of town, she said.
If things get really bad, stanchions would be erected to stop more people from entering and overcrowded area, she said.
However, any plan that risks cutting tourist revenue — even for a short time — is likely to run into trouble with businesses already deeply hurt by the pandemic.
For curated tourism to have a chance, a city’s hospitality sector must be on board, Marce said.
“Barcelona’s hospitality sector is very strong,” he said. “You can’t suddenly say there will be half as many tourists.”
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