Amsterdam deserves a tourism policy for the benefit of locals and visitors alike

Amsterdam, March the 13th – As the City of Amsterdam proposed new additional measures restricting short term rentals even further, Airbnb calls on Amsterdam to revisit their policies to adopt a fair and balanced approach to short-term rental regulation. Primary homes in the city center shared casually on Airbnb as STRs account for only around 2% of total overnight stays⁴; a negligible share compared to stays in hotels and other high occupancy rate accommodations and insufficient to justify restrictions on the basis of over tourism, housing shortage or livability.

Data shows⁵ hotel accommodations are particularly one of the main drivers of overtourism (with daytrippers) and liveability challenges in the city centre, where over 50% of hotels are located. In comparison, only around 20% of listings on Airbnb are located in the city centre⁶. This means that the vast majority of Airbnb STRs are located outside of the city centre, thus releasing touristic pressure on the city centre while creating economic opportunities outside of touristy hotspots. 

Facts should drive Amsterdam to revisit their tourism policies, starting with the escalation ladder proposal, which should focus restrictions on hotel accommodations—the real drivers of overtourism issues in central Amsterdam—while harnessing the potential of occasional short term rentals to disperse tourism and its benefits beyond central hotspots, like during major events such as SAIL 2025 and Global Pride 2026, but also for essential workers and students in need of temporary housing.

Building a sustainable tourism future in Amsterdam
A fairer and more balanced district-level approach to STR regulation will help manage tourism flows and housing concerns more effectively while supporting local communities and ensuring every Amsterdammer benefits from tourism. To this end, Airbnb proposes the following recommendations for STR rules that allow a balanced and sustainable tourism future in Amsterdam:

• Acknowledge the facts: Short-term rentals have much less impact on city-center tourism than hotels while providing vital income to local Amsterdam hosts. Regulations should be data-driven, only applied where clear evidence links STRs to nuisances rather than relying on misperception and false assumptions that additional measures on STRs will address current concerns on overtourism.
• Evidence-based rules that are flexible and targeted at neighborhood level: : Implement local measures where it’s necessary. While strict measures, such as neighborhood quotas, may be justified in the city center, Airbnb urges softer restrictions in less crowded areas on primary homes occasionally rented on a short term basis by:
  • Increasing the night limit in for example Zuidoost, Nieuw-West, Sloten/Nieuwe-Sloten, Tuindorp Oostzaan, Zeeburgereiland en Middenmeer to manage tourism flows more effectively, support tourism dispersal and bring benefits to local communities in these districts. 
  • Introducing an exemption to the four people maximum capacity for children to ensure families of all sizes can fully benefit from STRs.
  • Encouraging home sharing to accommodate large-scale events such as SAIL Amsterdam (2025) or WorldPride (2026).
  • Implement stricter regulations on accommodation dedicated to tourism in high-tourism districts, including neighborhood quotas.
• Targeted support for housing needs: Facilitate temporary STR opportunities for essential workers and students, and promote home-sharing arrangements to alleviate housing shortages, for example by promoting hospita rentals (‘hospitaverhuur’) through the Airbnb platform.
• Halt all new hotel projects and convert hotel accommodations to long term housing: Amsterdam should seize the opportunity to convert closing or low quality hotel accommodations into much-needed housing rather than allowing a one-to-one hotel replacement. By incentivizing hotel-to-housing conversions, the city can help alleviate the housing crisis. 
• Redirect tourist tax revenue back to local communities outside the city centre to community projects or new housing supply: Since 2015, Airbnb alone has collected and remitted over €66.8 million in tourist tax on behalf of hosts and guests in Amsterdam. We suggest reinvesting tourist tax revenue locally through a direct and transparent allocation to a dedicated community fund to enhance livability, ensuring economic benefits from tourism are more equally distributed, benefiting all Amsterdammers.
• Enhanced collaboration on travel dispersal: Work with platforms like Airbnb to encourage tourism in off-peak periods and promote lesser-known neighborhoods like Amsterdam Zuidoost and Nieuw-West.

Further limiting the right of Amsterdam residents to share the place they live in will not solve over tourism. This new restriction on Short Term Rentals is a mere political diversion from the real challenges: the continued growth of day trippers and hotel guests. This will only disproportionally hurt Amsterdammers who rely on hosting while redirecting tourism flows to more expensive hotels, leaving the liveability challenges unaddressed. 

Short term rental rules should always be data informed, targeted and proportionate, in line with national legislation and the EU framework, and local restrictions should focus on hotels which are the major driver of overtourism in historical city centers such as Amsterdam. We call on the municipality to review its tourism policies, and the escalation ladder proposal in particular, to the actual causes of current challenges while preserving economic opportunities for local residents and small businesses. 

– Clément Eulry, Country Manager in the Netherlands at Airbnb.

A more detailed version on how Airbnb encourages policymakers to adopt a fairer and more balanced approach to short-term rental (STR), can be found in the Policy Paper that Airbnb shared with city council members.