Amsterdam Residents Suing the City to Reduce Tourism

Residents of Amsterdam are suing the city in an effort to fight overcrowding from mass tourism.

The organization Amsterdam Has a Choice filed the legal complaint against the city on Sept. 22 after raising nearly $60,000 from supporters, per The Independent and EuroNews.com. The organization aims to force the city to limit overnight stays in Amsterdam to 20 million a year, per the org’s official website.

“Amsterdammers are fed up,” reads a translated statement on the website. “Everywhere you see the impact of mass tourism on the city: local shops are giving way to souvenir shops and Nutella stores. Houses and public buildings are being converted into hotels, and you can barely walk on the sidewalks because of the long lines at TikTok hotspots. The city is gradually losing its unique Amsterdam atmosphere.”

The organization states that 30,000 residents of Amsterdam have already signed a petition in favor of enacting concrete plans and policies to limit mass tourism. They also state that the city’s government technically already has a policy for limiting the number of annual tourists, but claims that no practical changes have been implemented.

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PEOPLE reached out to Amsterdam Has a Choice and the Municipality of Amsterdam for comment on Thursday, Oct. 2, but did not receive an immediate response.

Amsterdam follows a growing number of cities worldwide that are protesting overcrowding, specifically due to tourism.

Residents of Hallstatt, a small Austrian village rumored to be the inspiration for Arendelle in Disney’s Frozen movies, began protesting mass tourism in 2020. The scenic village, which has a population of approximately 780 people, was getting up to 10,000 tourists a day, according to a report from The Guardian.

Residents of Mexico City have also joined the anti-mass-tourism movement in recent months. In July, demonstrators took to the streets to protest both excessive tourism and gentrification in their communities, which they say have driven up rent and cost of living prices to untenable degrees for actual locals, per the BBC.

It has been estimated that one in five homes in the city’s Condesa district is now a short-term rental or tourist accommodation, according to the outlet.

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Other popular tourist destinations to protest mass tourism include Venice, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; and the Canary Islands, per Travel and Tour World.