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Amsterdam bans Airbnb in the old city center and severely restricts the ability to rent units elsewhere in the capital city.
THE HAGUE — Amsterdam announced on Thursday that it would ban vacation rentals including those on the home-sharing site Airbnb in three areas that make up the central old town from July 1.
In the other neighborhoods of the Dutch capital, vacation rentals will be allowed only with a special permit, and only for up to 30 days a year, to groups of no more than four people.
UPDATE: It looks like this effects over 7000 units.
If you could only rent for 30 days a year, to groups of no more than 4 people, I can’t imagine why anyone would bother doing it. Better to get a long-term renter or sell the place.
Poor Amsterdam hosts.
Oh jeez, that is a brutal crackdown. Imagine being a central Amsterdam host and you just about survived COVID and now this? The regulations in these major cities are now catching up with AirBnB. Renting out for max. 30 days is also a bit of a joke. You might as well not rent out at all (or at an exorbitant rate to justify the effort).
The travellers can rebook into hotels so I am not too worried about those (and I guess that was the point of this ban in the first place). The hosts though will be bleeding …
It was pleasure for those of us who live here in my Mexican tourist town full time to have the town closed down to all but residents for about 2 and half months. Even those who rely on the tourist trade as their only income could appreciate the experience of not having wall-to-wall tourists clogging up the sidewalks and holding up traffic as they meander 4 abreast down the middle of the street, gawking at the sights, completely oblivious to everything but themselves and their vacation. It was like a step back in time to 20 years ago when it was still a small fishing/ cowboy town, with a manageable amount of travellers and surfers from elsewhere.
Amsterdam is simply another European city that essentially has reaped what it had sown, many years ago.
The market in Europe, for “city breakers”, has been cut throat for years. Ryanair, Easyjet, et al have been woo’d by the tourism departments of these cities, cheap landing slots etc and other incentives to bring in as many heads for beds as is humanly possible.
Now they want to simply kill off the many STR businesses that helped them achieve their goals.
Unfortunately, its not just the STR businesses who will suffer, the hospitality industry in these cities will take a massive hit, which means higher unemployment and bars and restaurants closing down.
In my, not so humble opinion, a far more balanced approach is the way forward. Simply banning STR’s is a knee jerk reaction which will ultimately cause more issues than it will solve.
Of course that was also a huge concern. But even those who were in dire financial straits because of it commented on how nice it was, just on a physical level, to be able to enjoy their own town without having to spend 15 minutes stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic to go 3 blocks.
They are going to have to do a lot more than take 300 units off the market (the number of Airbnb units that came up for me using no filters other than Amsterdam) to achieve their stated goal. Edit: Ok I guess 300 is the default number that displays when there are a whole lot. I am going to AirDNA to see if I can figure out how many are actually there… it’s over 7k.
many in Amsterdam want to make sure that the city says “good riddance to mass tourism” and reverts to the numbers of visitors as they were around 2014, before the situation spun out of control from low-fare flights, Airbnb and budget tours.
With just 870,000 residents, Amsterdam attracts more than 19 million overnight visitors a year, according to official statistics.
The main goal of the citizens’ demand is to force measures that effectively will limit the number of visitors to 12 million overnight per year, considered “the manageable levels of 2014.”
Finally… it took them long enough.
Don’t be fooled, 90% of Amsterdams AirBnB’s are run by slumlords and investment companies, running illegal hotels. No live-in hosts are affected.
No poor families making ends meet are hurt…
A lot of properties have been converted from LTR to STR the last few years. Some streets are 90% AirBnB. The tertiary industry has changed, normal shops have gone and there is a McD and S***bucks on every streetcorner.
Whole night you hear trolley cases going up and down streets trough the whole city.
Amsterdam is one of the worst examples for tourism. Finally COVID-19 opened up the eyes and showed how the city can be, without being hoarded by tourists.
Again, it’s mostly slumlords and investment companies being hit. The few people still living in the center are very happy.
Interesting thing, one of the worst slumlords is a dutch royalty: DPG Media Privacy Gate
That’s definitely not true because I spent time looking at several private room listings and reviews on them in apartments and house boats inhabited by the owners. They may be a tiny minority, but they exist and have hundreds of great reviews each.
