Amsterdam's reprieve from overtourism

 Frida Ghitis reflects upon an Amsterdam transformed by the pandemic:

There's an unfamiliar seriousness in the air. The city that routinely drew millions of visitors, some looking for high art, many simply wanting to smoke pot, has grown a bit quieter. The people, it appears to me, have become friendlier. The city seems more grounded -- and lovelier than ever.

My last pre-pandemic visit was in 2019. Amsterdamers were exasperated, then, drowning in a flood of tourists. That year, an unbelievable 21 million people visited what is a relatively small city of less than 900,000 people.

Some tourists have returned, but the raucous crowds that made it impossible to hold your path for more than a few seconds on a sliver of sidewalk are nowhere in sight. The sidewalk cafes are still full when it's not raining. They have more tables outside. The city is still lively. But you hear almost only Dutch, another noticeable change.

The narrow, cobble-stoned streets are still buzzing with bicycles, but the riders are almost all Dutch. Gone are the swarms of tourists in yellow or red-painted rental bikes, pedaling uneasily and stopping suddenly, disruptively, for snapshot of one of the distinctive 17th century Dutch houses lining the old canals.

One of the (few) positives of the COVID-19 pandemic is that "overtouristed" destinations such as Venice, Dubrovnik, Barcelona and Amsterdam were given a respite from the hordes of visitors and the negative effects they bring: the crowds, the garbage, the kitschy souvenir shops, the vacation rentals pushing out longtime residents. This pause in tourist activity has given these cities time to consider what they want their tourist economy to look like going forward:

While much of the travel industry has spent the last year focused on how to recover from the pandemic as quickly as possible, some of the world’s most tourism-dependent economies are reveling in the emptiness and pushing back on attempts to return to the status quo.

In response, many destinations are using the respite to advance tourism management rather than tourism marketing plans, with an emphasis on more local input and control.

The challenges are steep. And the efforts, in many cases, precede Covid-19. 

But the global travel shutdown over the past year provided a silver lining of sorts for the overtourism problems that were hitting crisis levels in popular hot spots just before the pandemic was declared in March.

“The opportunity right now is that it’s like we’ve had an escape valve,” said Jonathon Day, an associate professor in Purdue’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. “We were above or right at capacity in some of our destinations. … Now, we’ve got a moment to say, is the system working?”

If the movements are successful, experts say, they will reshape the tourism experience by focusing on attracting higher-quality tourism that is more interested in and sensitive to local culture and sustainability while bolstering local businesses and enhancing the visitor experience.

Undesirable tourist activity has been a long-running issue for Amsterdam; I blogged about a planned crackdown on marijuana- and prostitution-related tourism over a decade ago. Ghitis notes that the residents of the city are focused on combatting many of the same tourist-related negatives today:

This was a good destination for my first international trip in nearly 18 months. Pre-pandemic Amsterdam might have been a shock to the system. I'm not the only one who likes it like this. The residents of the city have been complaining for years that their quality of life was declining because of overtourism. Authorities are trying to see what they can salvage from one of the few good outcomes of the crisis. They want to restrict arrivals, keep tourists away from cannabis "coffee shops," and prevent them from overrunning the Wallen, the centuries' old neighborhood that is also home to Amsterdam's famed red light district.

Eventually, the pandemic will end and tourists will return. This new, more serious Amsterdam will become another one of the memories of this strange time. For now, walking along the iconic canals, recognizing the quiet, and seeing how much has changed, how even the people seem a little different, is part of what traveling is all about, a heightened sense of awareness, the unmistakable feeling of being alive, and the knowledge that the world is calling out with more places to visit. I can hardly wait! (And I have already made reservations.)

I'd like to make a (responsibly-planned) return trip to Amsterdam sometime in the future as well. But for now, I'm glad that residents are getting a chance to enjoy some relative peace in their own city.