Amsterdam launches ‘stay away’ ad campaign targeting young British men

Amsterdam has warned troubled British sex and drug tourists to “stay away”.

A digital discouragement campaign targeting men aged 18 to 35 in the UK is being pushed out by a Dutch city council.

The initiative is part of efforts to clean up Amsterdam’s unsavory reputation as Europe’s most liberal party capital.

The online ads, which highlight the dangers associated with excessive use of drugs and booze, are triggered when people in Britain tap on terms such as – stag party, cheap hotel or pub crawl in Amsterdam.

The message is uncompromising – a long weekend in Amsterdam can create the wrong kind of memories, the escape you seek in the notorious party capital can result in inescapable convictions.

Brits can find return flights to Amsterdam for £50 (€57; $62).

UK-based travel agencies also offer stag weekends in Amsterdam, including canal boat cruises with unlimited booze, “steak and strip” nights and red light district pub crawls.

For years, people have complained of drunken Brits urinating in public, vomiting in drains, stripping and getting into drunken brawls.

This is not a new phenomenon. Almost a decade ago, the then mayor of Amsterdam invited his London counterpart Boris Johnson, who described the city as “shitless”, to see for himself what the Brits had got up to.

“They don’t wear coats as they slalom through the red light district… they sing ‘You’ll never walk alone’. They dress as rabbits or priests and sometimes they don’t. I want to invite him to witness it,” Eberhard van der Laan said then.

Critics say the targeted ad campaigns are discriminatory and based on unfair stereotypes.

In the Netherlands, coffee shops are allowed to sell cannabis as long as they comply with certain strict conditions, such as not serving alcoholic beverages or selling to minors.

“They may go for the weed but they stay for the Van Gogh,” Joachim Helms, owner of the Greenhouse coffee shop, told me.

He nodded to a woman in her 60s and pointed out that her clients came from all social and economic walks of life, arguing that attempts to exclude some based on their age and gender violated those principles of freedom, tolerance and equality that Amsterdam is proud of.

But the narrow, cobbled, bicycle-filled streets and canals are under pressure.

Amsterdam is one of the most visited cities in the world. Around 20 million visitors – including a million Brits – visit the city, which has a population of around 883,000, each year.

But too much tourism is testing the locals’ tolerance and forcing the council to act.

Larger-than-life billboards displayed in the red light district show photos of residents, with words reminding visitors: “We Live Here”.

The council is in the process of moving the famous neon-lit windows, where sex workers parade for trade, out of the capital’s residential heart to a new “erotic zone”.

The whispers about banning the sex trade have faded completely by now. Instead, stricter operating rules were introduced.

Starting this weekend, brothels and bars will have earlier closing hours and a ban on smoking cannabis on the streets in and around the Red Light District will come into effect in May.

There is still debate about whether tourists should be banned from the Dutch capital’s cannabis cafes.

Amsterdam’s mission is to make the city less polluted, more sustainable, and more livable.

But many locals who live in the tall narrow townhouses that line the 17th-Century canal rings tell me that the problem isn’t the young men but the sheer numbers.

“It’s like we live in Disneyland or a zoo,” the Visser family told me.

Deputy Mayor Sofyan Mbarki said that Amsterdam is already taking more management measures than other large European cities.

“Guests will remain welcome but not if they misbehave and cause a nuisance,” he added.

People have been reacting to the anti-tourism campaign on social media, with one person joking that it “looks more like a commercial to me” and another saying it’s a “mystery why 18-35 [year olds] will be attracted to a city with legal drug cafes and brothels”.

Others seemed skeptical of the campaign, with one woman writing: “They want to make money off families and museums but they know it’s grass and red lights that keep the city running.”