The tourist season started with Easter. The city center is busier, the Anne Frank House is already sold out for the whole of April. It is difficult to predict whether this year will be as busy as before the pandemic for the first time.
Until now, Hamdi Habib has had a rather quiet time with his stall at the Flower Market. But since this week? Explodes. Germans, Italians, French, he sums up, Americans, Israelis, Swiss. From shot glass to clog key ring, everything can be worn on them. As long as it is Delft blue or has a tulip image.
The Easter days herald the start of the Amsterdam tourist season, and that is noticeable in one fell swoop. Not only with entrepreneurs, but also with those who try to cycle to work in the morning. For example on the De Ruijterkade, where European river cruises moor, and during rush hour it is sometimes slalom to avoid the rolling suitcases.
The American couple Dana (61) and Bonnie Judd (59) have just stepped off such a cruise and are recovering for a while. They are in Amsterdam to visit their son who has moved here. But certainly not only that. A lot has to be ticked off in the next five days, including the Zaanse Schans, the Anne Frank House, the Keukenhof and a tour boat.
They already bought tickets for the Anne Frank House from Nevada, a smart move: the museum is sold out for the entire month of April, says Annemarie Bekker of the Anne Frank House. And that while they are open seven days a week from 9 am to 10 pm. That’s 3,400 visitors a day, who come from all over the world, according to Bekker.
Crises
It is ‘almost as busy’ as around this time in 2019, just before the corona crisis, thinks Geerte Udo. She is director of the municipal tourist office Amsterdam&Partners. Although it is still a bit early to make a comparison with previous years, she says, now that we are only at the start of the season.
If this season will indeed be as busy as before the pandemic, it would be the first time again: last year the city had not yet fully bounced back. After all, 2022 started with a lockdown, followed by the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis, inflation and staff shortages. Ultimately, foreign tourism in the Netherlands recovered that year to 79 percent of the level of 2019, the national tourist office NBTC mapped.
That will rise to 92 percent this year, the NBTC forecast in January. Many of the uncertainties of last year are still relevant, but corona has almost completely faded into the background. However, the pandemic still often keeps Asian tourists away: they sometimes have to deal with stricter travel restrictions.
It will therefore probably be a reasonably full tourist season, although Geerte Udo emphasizes that this is difficult to predict. “Before corona, there were quite a few calculation models that could make reliable forecasts. But due to the current crises and uncertainties, those models no longer work properly.”
Vermeertik
However tourism will unfold for the rest of the season, the crowds are already quite noticeable. Tonko Grever, chairman of the Amsterdam Museums Collaborative Foundation, also sees this in Amsterdam museums. Another factor, he says, is the successful Vermeer exhibition in the Rijksmuseum, which can be seen until 4 June and was sold out in no time.
“Suddenly we see a lot of French groups,” says Grever, who he says have an unmistakable ‘Vermeertic’. Other museums are piggybacking on the exhibition: for example, the Luther Museum successfully offers an alternative listening tour about Vermeer for art lovers who have not been able to get hold of a tour at the Rijksmuseum.
According to Grever, such an exhibition can attract the ideal tourist; different public than the low-budget fun tourist who causes nuisance. Cultural tourists don’t even do that by causing long queues, because online ticket systems have made that a thing of the past.
The ‘quality tourist’ is very welcome, says Geerte Udo: they contribute to the enrichment of the city. “30 percent of Amsterdam’s public transport is financed by visitors, and the diversity of art and culture in the city is partly due to tourists.”
Is the quality tourist gaining ground? That too is still too early to say, says Udo. The municipality is doing everything it can to discourage nuisance tourists – it mentions, among other things, the recently launched Stay Away campaign – but whether that has any effect remains to be seen. “It takes a long breath.”
The fun tourist is in any case difficult to spot in the city center on Thursday morning, which may well be due to the time. Tourists who are there invariably mention the same list of wishes: Zaanse Schans, Keukenhof, tour boat, and so on.
This also applies to the four 24-year-old Spanish women who are waiting for their free walking tour on Dam Square. There will be a party one night. That should happen in bar Coco’s Outback on Thorbeckeplein, mainly popular among backpackers, tourists and international students. Don’t they also find it busy in the city, with all those tourists? They shrug. “We are used to Barcelona.”