Ian Silvera

Amsterdam’s lazy campaign against British tourists

A prostitute in Amsterdam's red light district (Credit: Getty images)

Amsterdam has launched a campaign telling rowdy Brits to stay away. Men between the age of 18 and 35 are being targeted with videos showing what happens to those who overindulge. Brits who search online for terms like ‘stag do’, ‘cheap Amsterdam accommodation’ and ‘pub crawl Amsterdam’ will be served with the warning adverts featuring tourists being locked up or hospitalised.

To put it in wrestling terms, we’ve well and truly become the ‘heels’ of Europe. Brexit, it seems, has catalysed the unfair ‘bad boy Brit’ persona of a sometimes sluggish, mostly uncultured and drunken nation which urinates and swears its way across the continent while ordering beige grub in slow and shouty English. Amsterdam welcomes 20 million tourists per year and has long been perceived as a haven of sex, drugs and biking – sometimes in that order. But now, it appears, the city’s authorities want to put off Brits. Is this really fair?

Amsterdam’s ‘Stay Away’ campaign plays into the unruly Brit stereotype

The background to the ‘Stay Away’ campaign is that Amsterdam sort of wants to change its reputation, but sort of doesn’t – and young Brits have now found themselves in the middle of these political contortions.

The city’s mayor Femke Halsema, who has been in the post since April 2018, is at the heart of this muddle. Halsema, a former leader of the green left-wing GroenLinks party and the city’s first female mayor, has rightfully warned that some Amsterdammers feel estranged from their own city as the commercialisation of prostitution and soft drugs has created a hedonistic headache.

Many residents are understandably tired of the ugliness and anti-social behaviour. The city’s authorities reacted late last year by launching a ‘Visitor Economy 2035’ plan, a package of measures with the overarching aim of changing Amsterdam’s international reputation. The ‘Stay Away’ campaign – which will initially target British men before being rolled out more widely – is part of this initiative.

But the trouble is that Halsema doesn’t exactly want to get rid of all the vices blighting one of Europe’s most picturesque capitals.

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