Airbnb-style leases ‘dangerous’ to Amsterdam, says tourism chief

A quiet night time within the pink gentle district in 2022  Photograph: S Boztas

The pinnacle of Amsterdam’s metropolis advertising and marketing organisation has stated that Airbnb-style leases are ‘dangerous’ in cities, and that the Dutch capital now not needs to develop tourism.

Geerte Udo, director of amsterdam&companions, instructed mayors and metropolis specialists on the Bloomberg CityLab assembly on Tuesday that insurance policies to intention for ever extra tourism and companies had been changed by ‘high quality over amount’.

‘Non-public vacation rental was dangerous in cities like Amsterdam,’ she stated. ‘I’m not speaking about rural areas the place it was not cost-efficient to have a lodge however now folks can host guests.

‘If it advantages the locals [that is different] however in our metropolis, it didn’t. It took away a number of homes from the market. We as Amsterdam folks should combat arduous to discover a home anyway. In order that’s what we expect: from a metropolis perspective, it takes out social cohesion and it didn’t add any homes.’

Udo believes that from a metropolis perspective, too many personal vacation leases negatively have an effect on social cohesion because the visitors take much less duty for the neighbourhood, whereas in a interval of housing scarcity, homes are ‘constructed to dwell in not as funding property to hire out to guests’.

Ethical holidays

She instructed the convention that again in 2015 town advertising and marketing coverage was to draw as many vacationers as doable – however now the emphasis has modified utterly to concentrate on ‘excessive worth’ enterprise and cultural vacationers, plus simpler crowd administration.

Nonetheless, Udo stated that the pink gentle district has to vary if Amsterdam is to discover a higher stability between native wants and profitable tourism coverage.

‘If you happen to discuss concerning the change of a picture, that’s not simple,’ she stated. ‘First, you must be sure to have a special metropolis.

‘That’s why I’m actually grateful to our mayor [Femke] Halsema, that she has an enormous undertaking on redesigning our previous metropolis centre. So long as we’ve got the provide that we’ve got now within the metropolis centre, we’ll entice folks which are occurring ethical holidays. You can not affect that with campaigning.’

Sensors

She added that many vacationers wish to discover greater than De Wallen (pink gentle district), and town is specializing in selling totally different sights to those folks. ‘It’s our process to see how we are able to handle social algorithms so that you just get the suitable picture of Amsterdam that can entice the guests that actually add worth to our vacation spot and the standard of lifetime of our residents,’ she stated. ‘We don’t wish to develop tourism any extra: we completely shifted from amount to high quality.’

Town now makes use of sensors in public areas to assist with crowd administration, Halsema instructed the convention on Monday, alerting hosts within the pink gentle district to impose one-way strolling on streets in the event that they turn into so busy police and emergency companies can now not enter.

Udo stated that town is utilizing such instruments and social media to encourage folks to go to sights at instances when they’re much less crowded, or go to locations which are off the overwhelmed observe.

‘As quickly as we all know learn how to handle public area in order that we don’t expertise the overcrowding within the previous metropolis centre and past, then we are able to possibly host extra folks,’ she stated. ‘However development in itself isn’t a objective of ours.’