Over-tourism: Why Amsterdam is shutting down cruise ship terminal in a bid to control visitor numbers and which other cities are controlling tourism

Over-tourism has become an issue for many popular destinations, including Amsterdam and Edinburgh

When Dutch politician Ilana Rooderkerk sees a cruise liner making its way towards her home city, her heart sinks.

"Like a kind of locust plague, they move into the city centre all together, with the associated nuisance,” the leader of the liberal D66 party wrote in Dutch newspaper Het Parool last month. She was speaking of the passengers of the giant ships, which on average, dock at the Dutch capital once every three days.

Now Amsterdam’s council has unveiled proposals to close the city’s cruise ship terminal in a bid to keep groups of day trippers away.

Customers drink and eat at a terrace in the centre of Amsterdam.

Announcing the plans, Ms Rooderkerk said the ships do not “fit in with Amsterdam's task of cutting the number of tourists”. The city has long struggled with its own popularity and tourism success.

Other Dutch media has claimed cruise ships are as bad for the overcrowded city as “coach parties and British stag parties”, which have been the subject of a “Stay Away” campaign from local authorities. Those authorities have also banned the smoking of legal cannabis outdoors and are considering moving Amsterdam’s infamous red light district outside of the historic centre.

“Cruise ships are really responsible for the big swell in day visitation to major cities,” says Professor John Lennon, director of the Moffat Centre for travel and tourism business development at Glasgow Caledonian University.

"The destination gets really busy as a consequence of this and, when I say busy, I mean it's busy with footfall, but not with expenditure. The trickle-down effect on the economy is actually quite small. A cruise ship is a floating resort, which means the actual per capita expenditure [in a destination] is quite low because a floating resort wants to retain as much of that expenditure in the resort as it can.”

Amsterdam is not the only city to suffer from what has become known as “over-tourism”.

Named as one of the Collins Dictionary “words of the year” in 2018, over-tourism kicked in as the boom in cheap air travel saw hoards of travellers flock to popular destinations, sparking criticism from local residents, who complained of soaring rental prices as properties were snapped up by AirBnB landlords, and overcrowding on city streets.

In the same year in Venice, Italy, temporary gates were installed at the ends of bridges to keep tourists out if their numbers became overwhelming. A couple of years earlier, the city also brought in restrictions on the size of cruise ships permitted.

Meanwhile, Spanish city Barcelona, which often sees locals outnumbered by tourists in the summer months, has recently capped the number of cruise ship passengers allowed into the city. It has also looked to distribute tourists outside of key sites in the city centre, marketing attractions within reach of the main hub, but away from the famous sites.

Prof Lennon welcomes the initiative, but warns of a potential pitfall – social media.

"The problem is the tendency for people to want to capture these iconic sites on their cameras and then upload them,” he says. “We see that in so many locations in Scotland, such as the Fairy Pools in Skye, or certain streets in Edinburgh where there's so many people taking selfies. The kind of culture that we live in where people want to display this wonderful life they’re having is also driving people to hot-spots and acting against what is well-meaning distribution by tourist boards.”

Prof Lennon points to the irony in this, where airlines connect “urban centres with urban centres” and city dwellers leave one busy hub where they work, for another, where they opt to spend leisure time.

“There is an inherent economic logic for tourism beyond the urban hot-spots, because it results in distributed expenditure and can help jobs in highly seasonal, rural destinations,” he says. “But there is an inherent tension there between the transportation linkages and the dominance that they have in moving people from urban to urban destinations and the attempt by government and tourist organisations to distribute tourists.”

In February, the government of the Balearic Islands suggested it would cap the number of visitors to the islands to just 16.5 million a year. However, only a few days later, it backtracked.

"It is a brave government that will actually limit tourism,” says Prof Lennon.

Michael O’Regan, also a lecturer in tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University, says he believes the word “over-tourism” should be banned, as it places the onus of the problems faced by popular destinations onto the tourists, rather than local governments.

"It was never meant to point the finger at tourists, but that's what has happened," he says. “Instead of looking at the people who are in charge of tourism, which is the politicians, the marketing organisations, who are turning a blind eye to things like the effects of short-term rentals, we are pointing the finger at tourists who we've asked to come and then saying it’s their fault for coming.”

He argues areas which see a sudden peak in tourism, such as Iceland, after its financial crash at the end of the 2010s brought prices down and attracted thousands of visitors, eventually often see levels even out.

However, he admits some cities – like Barcelona, Amsterdam and Edinburgh – are always going to experience high numbers of visitors, which require management from city leaders.

He says: "If you look at Amsterdam, they're doing it the right way. They've had issues with tourism impacting upon local people and their quality of life. So they've reduced marketing and are stopping cruise ships landing at the city. They've taken a lot of steps to reduce the negative sides of tourism.

“Everything a city needs, they have within their toolbox. They can include tourist taxes if they want, they can restrict licences for new hotels or restrict enlargement hotels, or they can restrict when pubs, nightclubs start and finish. There's a whole host of tools out there.”