Amsterdam has become the latest European city to organize protests against overtourism, following a demonstration against its “unlivable” conditions.
This year, Amsterdam introduced restrictions on how tourists enter and stay in the city, aiming to limit overnight stays to just 20 million tourists a year, The Independent reports.
But the canal city's tulip gardens and famous Red Light District show no sign of slowing down. Amsterdam received around 22 million stays in 2023, 2 million more than the proposed limit.
Dingeman Coumou, the organizer of the “Enough is Enough” campaign, pointed out that the tourism that “floods the city” is now becoming destructive for the life of locals in Amsterdam: “It makes it so that our children can no longer live in the city because of high real estate prices, it creates a monoculture, but above all the center of Amsterdam is becoming uninhabitable because of the crowds.”