Amsterdam tourist tax: 47 industry leaders ask for a pause
Hospitality, culture and the conference sector want the city to suspend the rise. With VAT, tax on a hotel night will reach 41 per cent.
Forty-seven leading figures from Amsterdam's hospitality, culture and events sectors are asking the city to suspend its planned increase of the tourist tax. In a letter to the city council they warn that Amsterdam is pricing itself out of the market.
The signatories include outgoing Corendon chief executive Gunay Uslu, restaurateur Won Yip, Yoeri Albrecht and Paul Riemens, head of RAI Amsterdam. "This way Amsterdam is pricing itself out of the market in the wrong way," they write, according to Dutch news agency ANP. They say they do not object to visitors contributing to the city, but they do object to taxes piling up.
From 21.5 to 41 per cent
This way Amsterdam is pricing itself out of the market in the wrong way.
Amsterdam's tourist tax is currently 12.5 per cent of the room price. Next year it rises to 16 per cent and by 2031 to 20 per cent, which according to AT5 will give Amsterdam the highest tourist tax in the world. On top of that comes VAT on hotel stays, which rose nationally from 9 to 21 per cent this year. Together, the tax on a hotel night in Amsterdam climbs from 21.5 per cent last year to 41 per cent in 2031, almost double.
The letter calls the higher hotel bill "the first stone in a longer chain". Conferences, productions and events may choose another city, which then hits local spending, jobs and municipal income. Visitors who sleep outside the city still come to Amsterdam during the day, but spend less there. Restaurants, cafés and cultural venues feel that directly.
What the signatories want
The group asks the council to take another critical look at the plan. They want an independent study into what the combination of higher VAT and a higher tourist tax means for every sector, and a suspension of the increase until then. Criticism is not new: the conference sector and ABN Amro have already warned about fewer business stays.
For Amsterdam's restaurants the debate comes at a difficult time. Costs have been rising for a while, as chef Ron Blaauw said this month when announcing the closure of Ron Gastrobar. We have also covered bankruptcies in Dutch hospitality.
