Amsterdam city council’s marketing arm Amsterdam&Partners is continuing to fund press trips to the city, despite official pledges to cut back on tourism.

In 2025, Amsterdam&Partners organised 22 group and 134 individual press trips and other events to the region, according to the promotional video the agency has published. These, the video says resulted in over 5,282 pieces of editorial “significantly increasing visibility for Amsterdam and the surrounding areas”.

One of those articles was published in the Guardian newspaper earlier this year. Entitled “My search for the perfect brown bar in Amsterdam”, the article describes the writer’s “bar crawl of the city’s bruine kroegen”. Amsterdam&Partners has confirmed that it “facilitated this visit and provided partial support”.

“The focus on Amsterdam’s brown bars fits within our broader approach of highlighting cultural heritage and local stories,” a spokeswoman said. “We do this through our own channels and occasionally through authoritative media such as The Guardian, which has a large reach among people interested in art and culture.”

Last year a group of Amsterdam residents said they are taking city council to court for failing to tackle rising tourist numbers. In particular, they are angry that the council’s self-imposed limit of 20 million overnight stays a year has been broken for the past three years.

Amsterdam introduced the limit in 2020 after more than 30,000 residents signed a petition calling for action and pledged to take steps to keep to the maximum.

However, in February it emerged that city officials believe the 20 million is only a target and has no grounding in law.

The residents, united under the name Amsterdam heeft een keuze, or Amsterdam has a choice, are demanding that tourist stays are reduced to below 20 million by 2028 and remain below that level thereafter. They also want the council to publish the impact of the different measures it has introduced.

“It is very strange that Amsterdam is financing Amsterdam&Partners to promote the city internationally and attract more visitors,” spokesman Jacques Hubbes told Dutch News.

“The city is effectively subsidising additional tourism while simultaneously claiming it wants to reduce it, which is, at best, highly inefficient. We will definitely refer to this in the lawsuit against the city to force it to comply with its own rules.”

Funding

The city of Amsterdam financed Amsterdam&Partners to the tune of €5.39 million in 2025, money which was spent on its culture campaign, congresses and the Amsterdam Bezoeken Holland Zien (ABHZ) programme to spread visitors – the city prefers to use visitors rather than tourists – to the wider areas.

Zaanse Schans is promoted as “Old Holland”. Photo: Depositphotos

Amsterdam&Partners in turn made a loss of €627,000 in 2024 and said then it would probably make a loss in 2025. The foundation’s 2025 report has not yet been published and the organisation declined to provide Dutch News any further information about its spending on marketing to tourists.

The spokeswoman said the aim of the foundation’s work is not to attract additional visitors but to “influence the way the city is portrayed and on spreading visitors more evenly”.

Media approaches

Most of the individual media visits start with a request from journalists themselves, the spokeswoman said. “International and national media regularly approach us with story ideas about Amsterdam, after which we help guide them towards topics and locations that align with the city’s objectives”.

“Without this type of guidance, the narrative about Amsterdam would be left entirely to the free market, which tends to favour large, commercially strong attractions and can increase pressure on already busy areas.”

Amsterdam’s tourism chief Sofyan Mbarki told Dutch News in a statement that Amsterdam is not focused on “stimulating tourism to the Netherlands but on reducing the number of visitors to our city and spreading those who do come to other parts.”

Tourism is big business. Photo: DutchNews.nl

Business interests

“We also note that there are opposing interests between the focus on fewer visitors to the city and the city’s businesses who benefit from more visitors,” he said in a statement. “We are in talks with both business and A&P.”

The city has already taken steps, such as reducing the options for holiday rentals, increasing tourist tax and launching a “stay away” campaign to discourage budget tourists out to take drugs and party.

Increasing the tourist tax – currently the highest tourist tax in Europe at 12.5% of the hotel bill – and banning non-residents from the city’s cannabis cafes are also currently under consideration.

The new look administration will publish its plans for the coming four year – including tackling over-tourism – on Wednesday.