Amsterdam bans cruise ships
bbc.com
bbc.com
It provides mostly only low skilled jobs (just like mining) and the financial benefits largely accrue to wealth holders (just like mining).
Proper management is crucial to make sure it does not destabilize local economies. Banning cruise ships is a good start.
I know a number of people that had their view on tourism change after reading this. Myself included.
Someone's severely out of touch.
No jobs in semi autonomous robotics for you then.
https://www.riotinto.com/en/about/innovation/automation
and that's barely scratching the surface of the range of high tech job oppoprtunities in the mineral exploration and extraction sector.
Quick, just whip me up a low tech magnetotelluric imaging station, integrate that data with EM, seismic, radiometrics, bore hole samples and knock out an optimal pit design with workable angles, power sources and estimates for plant and machine construction and deployment costs.
It's no wonder the US barely operates at scale with attitudes such as that.
For every advanced, safe, automated mine like you describe there is another that's exactly the opposite. They still have giant open pit asbestos Minesin some countries for Gods sake.
I'm not trying to dog on mining. I went to the Colorado school of Mines, many of my fellow students and teachers had bumper stickers that said "the car you're sitting in and the road its driving on brought to you by mining".
It's (mining's) not bad, it's just your comment misses the point.
Good for you, I just went straight from working on a minesite as a teenager (late 1970s) into geophysical coding for global exploration surveys after writing fleet optimisation and pit design software with a segue between in multichannel marine seismic aquisition | processing .. and then worked on the backend of the pre S&P version of
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met...
> For every advanced, safe, automated mine like you describe there is another that's exactly the opposite.
Sure, by number, in fact I'd say there's more than one - shitty mines outnumber 'good' mines.
Now, how's that go by mining volume and percentage contribution to the global resource demand?
The Rio Tinto and other Anglo Australian iron ore mines in Western Australia alone put out some 800 million tonnes per annum - other mine sites for iron ore on that scale are few but equally modern - they don't hit that scale by having grubby faced children walk material out via hessian sacks across their backs.
Even the high volume coal mines are open cuts with Bagger 288 scale machines.
When you look at the bulk volume of global scale resource supply would you say that a large percentage of that material comes from "modern mines" or from mines such as Brazil's Serra Pelada [1] ?
https://www.icij.org/investigations/dangers-dust/russia-worl....
I'd be willing to bet that mine isn't terribly automated, and they're pulling serious amounts out.
The mine you mention in Australia sounds cool. It's not on this top 10 list, which has many other, seemingly larger, open pit Mines in places like Russia, etc. That again, are likely not very automated.
https://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-top-ten-d...
It really depends on what resources you are talking about and where in the world. I agree with you for things like copper. I don't at all agree with you for things like diamonds, gold, most gems, rare earth metals, titanium, asbestos, etc.
https://www.uralasbest.ru/index.php?q=en/about-company
I'm chasing the grandparent comment that mining is "low skill" work to point out that some actual focused effort is required.
Diamonds come either direct from Kimberlite pipes or from the downwash from their erosion.
As you likely know from your school of mines it takes some not low skill level magnetic surveying to find and identify good kimberlite pipes.
While we all know stories of conflict diamonds and the related dubious conditions there remains many diamond mines underpinned by skilled techniques; - machine use and maintenaince to remove the overburden and core deep into the earth without collapse, often in severe environments ("trad" mining) and of course the new (well, a few decades old) techniques of marine vacuum mining
https://www.wsj.com/articles/de-beers-harvests-diamonds-at-t...
Custom build floating exploration | extraction plants don't roll cheap so you know the volume is there for the profit to foot those bills.
Gold, bulk gold, comes mainly from superpits ( eg: https://www.superpit.com.au/ ) that return ~ $billion per annum, rare earths like lithium are another local resource and again from modern mines like Greenbushes .. there's a hard rock engineer from there commenting on HN and maybe you can make the case that their work is low skilled. (I'll stand clear).
With demand growing at numbers that hit billions of tonnes per year it takes applied technology to reach the goals expected, it's not exactly easy.
With massive fuel demands we also see miners leading the way in advancing new green (and cheaper, less polluting) technologies (eg: https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green... | https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green... )
The key thing that I think you are missing is that you are conflating miners with mining engineers.
You have very specific experiences and are close to mining in a way that the broader public isn't. To lost of the broader public, when they say miner they mean a guy that's all black from digging coal carrying a pick axe.
The grandparent comment was referring to that, old, industrial revolution image of a miner. You shouldn't take offense.
Not at all - I'm talking about miners as in "all the people that work on the minesites that produce the overwhelming mass of raw minerals extracted ever year".
Mining engineer is just one job of many.
Electrians, boilermakers, diesal mechanics, storemasters, riggers, splicers, uphole drillers, control system specialists, machine operators (generally ticketed by machine class of which there are many), blast specialists, track and rail crews, . . . .
These are all skilled trades.
> To lots of the broader public, when they say miner they mean a guy that's all black from digging coal carrying a pick axe.
Yes, they do.
And that's essentially incorrect.
I'm pointing out that is incorrect .. and for some reason you're apparently taking issue with that correction.
I'm not offended that many people have many misconceptions about many things, occasionally, as above, I point out misconceptions and move on.
I am perplexed as to why yourself, an apparent self declared graduate of a school of mines that presumeably teaches some skill set, goes to such lengths to oppose correction to stereotype.
I'm starting to wonder whether in fact you've ever actually worked on a minesite.
I wanted to put this to bed so I pulled some stats.
It turns out it's shades of Grey.
According to the BLM the average wage for the mining industry in the US is $21 an hour. According to the stats linked to below there are several industries above Mining as far S average wage, some significantly so. But at the same time mining is way above the service and accommodations industry, which is dead last on this data. Which I think was your point. Mining shouldn't be compared to the accommodations industry as far as average wage and technical skill are concerned. Just because both come in below the top 5 or so doesn't mean they're all at the bottom.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/243834/annual-mean-wages...
They're for people too lazy to travel. The absolute last thing I want is to be regimented into groups with 2,000 other people. And, by the way, catch their diseases, which is something that happened to cruise passengers even before the pandemic.
I found, when I went to Alaska, absolutely everyone asked, "Oh, did you go on a cruise?" No, I flew and rented a car. You should try it.
Interested to see what the hype is about. Some friends of our love cruises and don’t particularly care about “travel” they just enjoy the cruise experience.
I'm not sure why some have such a disdain for other people's vacation choice. I don't care to lay on a beach or be at a pool for most of my vacation but to each their own.
I've also enjoyed "pretending to travel." Yes, you only get a shallow dip/view of each place. But you kick back and enjoy luxury on a premium line. It's been nice with kids, too, where there's been good childcare built in and logistics are simpler. Cruises have been about 25% of my vacation travel days but I am grateful for the experience.
Different people like different things and different people have different circumstances. Best not to be too judgy.
(Now, cities may rationally choose they would prefer not to have cruise tourism-- that's a separate matter).
Lol
Sure; it's not spending months or more (which I've done a couple of times).
But most people tend to spend a couple days in one city on another continent and then move on to the next one; hitting 4-5 cities in a week and a half.
If I'm taking a short trip, it tends to be longer than most people's idea of a short trip. Even so, we tend to go to one or two cities and surrounding area.
Kidding aside, while I am also not interested in cruising, I can see how it might be a good option for the aged or large families.
I have gone on one cruise many years ago and while it was too boring for me, I came back super relaxed because of how bored I was. So I can see why someone may be into it.
We do need more regulation to force ship to use better fuel and more on-shore energy. More like France to ban short air trips.
By the way - I visit a museum at many places. Not sure what is meant by consuming the city. If you arrive by boat, you must use public transport (or good old feet) to get around. I understand that it is a a surge in demand, but I am putting money in to the local economy. I do not use international chain (except Ikea in Sweden - meat balls). Local worker in local shops.
Rotterdam is a nicer city to visit by cruise ship that Amsterdam. Apart from the Van Gogh museum.
Public transport is usually run at a loss, and at least partly funded with local taxes. Same for public museums, although I don't know about the Netherlands.
I think the amount of pollution per passenger is really disproportionately high for cruise ships, and I'm afraid nothing can be really done about it. It's just a less efficient means of transportation.
Now, living in Antwerp the pollution caused by container ships is at a whole other level though.
Boats could be a very efficient way of travel. Luxury cruise ships are inefficient because they general carries things like swimming pools, golf courses, major shopping malls and restaurants. The proportion of space and weight that is used for transportation is tiny compared to something like a train, buss or aircraft (or even a car).
Ferries in contrast has very low carbon footprint of travel per kilometer, as can be read in this graph: (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-footprint-travel-m...).
Since container ships has a very high ratio of transported goods vs total weight of the ship, and those tend to have one of the lowest carbon footprint per ton/mile. It is one of many reason why things like ore is generally always preferred to be shipped by water.
Cruise ships are not perfect. I love to take the sleeper train everywhere. Perfect is the enemy of good. Air travel is bad. Carbon footprints is a hard one, try to minimise impact. I think nudging the industry into electric ships and using shore-side power is better.
>Public transport is usually run at a loss Maybe - look I don't want to go anywhere which do not want the ship to visit, however local officials (democratically elected) keep building facilities for ship to visit.
>Same for public museums, I never bulk at a price - charge me a tourist rate - or use tricks so local can pay less. Put the price of the gift ship. But for example the Gender museum in Aarhus you not going to get a better take on local thinking without a physical visit.
Meaning diesel exhaust? So, nitrous oxide? I assume they're not allowed to burn heavy fuel oil in port.
Worse-- public transport usually more than covers its variable costs at the margin, but has fixed costs related to peak use. Cruise ships help set that peak use, but don't provide consistent ridership.
That is, it's the variability that makes public transport expensive and troublesome, and cruise ships pile on variability.
Tough luck for us all, especially when there are so many downsides of cruises or flying. But not all tourism is “bad” and of course many economies depend on it - it’s a tricky balance.
And that's before you get into drug tourism, which Amsterdam has a lot of as well.
I was born there and lived there for 28 years, I'll still visit occasionally because I still have some friends there but on the whole the city has lost its charm for me.
Ok - so how to I go on holiday and not be a locust ? What is the solution no holidays, no travel ?
I live in London and its can be fun trying to get a real work meeting near Houses of Parliament as 'locusts' are all around. However - quid pro quo
>And that's before you get into drug tourism, which Amsterdam has a lot of as well. Not sure the tourism came before the changes to local drug enforcement.
Working on a few days surrounding the queens funeral was a pain - got stuck near Westminster tube for half an hour, got stuck the wrong side of the mall for a while, but on the whole I find very little impact.
The tourist amenities are on the whole scaled appropriately.
The problem with cruise ships is they dump a thousand people into a small town, they spend very little, use all the space, clog the main instagram landmark, then leave.
A normal tourist visiting the city would have several nights in a hotel, be eating lunch and dinner out, be visiting multiple attractions. This brings more money into the city, spreads them out across different sites, and is naturally limited by the availability of hotels.
Bring your own hotel breaks this model.
The sad answer is that everyone _left_ Amsterdam by choice - and allowed these tourism centric industries to grow. The money that it brought in was too good and eventually lead to the so called decline you seem to be complaining about.
As for property price rise - people have the same complaint against tech workers. So I guess I can no longer be a tourist and I can't work in tech because someone somewhere is definitely going to be angry that I make more money and the world isn't fair.
Amsterdam's strategy would have worked very well indeed if it had been adopted all over Europe. But to be 'first mover' really hurt.
You were the pollutant, and the natives want the tourists to go away and not come back.
> Mayor Femke Halsema complained last year that cruise tourists were let loose for a couple of hours, ate at international chains and had no time to visit a museum, consuming the city but doing little for it.
They cite 20 million visitors each year, which is a huge number of people. Even if those people each only show up for one day (evenly distributed through the year) and leave, that's 55,000 people each day, which is a huge number.
Those are people who might be putting some money into the local economy, but it sounds like the cost to the government for all of the services provided to support the tourism industry (police, healthcare, etc) isn't making enough of an impact on the local economy to justify.
https://cruisedig.com/ports/amsterdam-holland/arrivals
Suggests much less than 55,000 people each day. More like 3,000
And by your numbers, assuming cruise ships dock for roughly the same amount of time as the median tourist visits the city, that means one 4000-person ship represents about 7% of the tourists in the city. Banning cruise ships is an awfully simple solution to take a meaningful bite out of a problem that local authorities clearly think is important.
If you visit for 5 days you’re only going to see the pyramids one one day. 20 tourist-days means 4 pyramid visits, 4 Egyptian museum visits, 2 or 3 up the tower and various visitors to different museums and mosques, multiple meals out throughout the week.
As someone who lives in a city that's popular with tourists and has a major summer cruise industry, that's...not entirely accurate. A lot of tourists exit the boat and head straight for a line of taxis and app-based gig workers. This results in a staggering amount of added car traffic. The city has tried adding tourist-focused bus routes and branded shuttles but rail bias is a major thing in tourism.
> I am putting money in to the local economy. I do not use international chain (except Ikea in Sweden - meat balls). Local worker in local shops.
I understand that it feels like this and maybe it is true to a limited extent, but when an area becomes dominated by tourism, tourist-focused industries take over and shops and services that cater to longer-term residents are pushed out.
CityBeautiful has an insightful video on this happening in Venice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SClC9TtQlco
Good video - thanks.
>area becomes dominated by tourism
Good point - make me thinks. How to a be a better customer and stop cruise ports becoming over dominating. Give-up cruising ? Be more selective of which ports.
South-west England is becoming like this (I travelled by sleeper train) and feel like tourists dominate locals. So dont like going there.
Do ethical holiday exist ?
If the locals hate the tourist dollars so much they could close down their tourist attractions. That they don’t speaks volumes: They definitely want the tourist dollars.
So visit away, and trust that the locals have lots of options (including tourist taxes) if they really want to curb visitors.
This asymmetry lies at the heart of many net negative societal problems.
As the article says, Amsterdam is drowning in tourists, and prefers those that bring in more money to the local economy.
Cruise ship passengers sleep on board, have breakfast on board and may even have dinner on board because that’s included in their fee for the cruise.
I’m also guessing that most of these cruise ships aren’t the most luxurious of cruise ships, and aren’t carrying the richest of tourists.
They figured out (or at least improved on) transportation of people. City design is amazing and they have a multitude of options to move around (bike, train, walkable, or micro transportation). Their cities are much more cleaner, enjoyable, not as noisy, and everyone in general seems much more happier.
Contrast this to hellholes like most of the USA where it is an absolute necessity to own a car. Minimal alternatives. High dependency on highway / street infrastructure that requires significant resources to build AND maintain.
However please don't emulate our habit of flying to exotic destinations during our summer vacation. That would probably be the final nail in the coffin for the global climate.
But they won’t. It’s culturally incompatible.
Apropos of nothing, they also have weed in coffee shops and a regulated industry of 'negotiable affection'.
This strikes me as disingenuous when taking into consideration the population density and just generally the size of land mass of the US, compared to the Netherlands or Denmark. You're comparing the US, which is, generally, much more broad open land with fewer people per square kilometer. Like, a lot fewer people. 523 people/km2 in the Netherlands compared to 37 people/km2 in the US.
Like, yes, in a wide open stretch of land, people will spread out more, necessitating more personal and speedy forms of transportation. It's not a hellhole just because you're not packed into flats like a sardine and the same convenience store exists on every kilometer stretch of city road.
Speaking as someone in the US who works from home and commonly bikes to the grocery store in my small town. The way the US is built allows for more of a sense of solitude (outside of the major cities.) This doesn't make it a hellscape just because it's not your way of living. Not by a long shot. Anyway, this is all at risk of sounding personally offended, which I am not; but the word "hellhole" seems a bit much, and far too broadly used for such a large piece of land with so many different subcultures within it.
There's plenty of opportunity in the US to invest in other forms of transportation. The only thing that's missing is the political will, and that's because US politics has been bought by the oil industry, which benefits from inefficient transportation.
I mentioned that in my comment as well. The "different subcultures" part, and the "outside of the major cities" bit. Of course large cities formed in areas all around the US. I'm talking about the majority of the land mass of the US, which is widely dispersed.
> There's plenty of opportunity in the US to invest in other forms of transportation
Inefficient transportation is necessitated by having 9 million square kilometers of land, where your friends, family, and jobs are spread across it. There's plenty of efficient public transportation inside the large cities. Admittedly outside of large cities, methods of efficient transportation are sparse. I used to take a train from my college in a small town in the midwest about a 4 hour ride up to Chicago, and then hop on another train to visit my family, which was another couple of hours on that train, and then the last 5-10 miles was usually via car or taxi, as busses outside of the major cities are few and far between. That 6+ hour journey, with an additional layover period between the two trains, was compared to a 2 hour drive via personal vehicle. So yeah, people out here buy cars.
The idea that efficient transportation is completely stonewalled by politics strikes me as someone who hasn't themselves lived in a suburban or rural region of the US before. The kind of logistical problems that the US would have to face to make more efficient forms of transportation across the entire US are unlike the problems the Netherlands would have faced on a much, much smaller segment of the Earth.
Inside a few large cities. A lot of US cities are still designed around massive stroads, with barely any lip service to buses and bike paths. I still remember how surprised I was back in the 1990s when someone who lived there told me that there were no buses after 7pm in the largest city of New Mexico. Of course that's no LA or NY, which I'm sure have better public transport.
> That 6+ hour journey, with an additional layover period between the two trains, was compared to a 2 hour drive via personal vehicle. So yeah, people out here buy cars.
That's not exactly a sign of efficient public transportation, then. From what I understand, US trains go more slowly than trains elsewhere, and on top of that often have delays because freight trains have priority. Just changing that would already help a lot.
Of course there will always be places that can't efficiently be services by public transport, and there's always tradeoffs to be made, but it's pretty clear that in much of the US, public transport has no priority.
> across the entire US
But you don't have to do it across the entire US at once. Focus on the cities first. And on densely populated regions like the north east. Although the US was originally also built around big transcontinental railroads, and that worked. A lot of infrastructure has been destroyed. Not just in the US; also in Europe. I love looking at train maps from the 1930s, and shake my head at everything that's been destroyed.
Yeah, if you intended on talking about large cities, New Mexico would not be included in that list. New York, Los Angelos, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Boston, Washington DC would be a few real metros that you could refer to as a "large city" around here with decent public transit systems. And that public transit usually extends out to their suburbs fairly well. Trick comes with crossing from one large city to another, or through wide open rural ways. Efficient transport just doesn't spiderweb out across all that open prairie in the US.
Touching on your point too, I believe trains in the US are typically of the slower variety when compared to trains from other developed countries. They also often make stops every few miles to pick up and drop off passengers that slow them down quite a lot. When you consider how far some of these train tracks go, a stop every 3-8 miles or so adds up to a lot of time.
> if you intended on talking about large cities, New Mexico would not be included in that list.
According to Wikipedia, Albuquerque has a population of 562,599, which would make it the third largest city in Netherland. That's not a megapolis, but it's not small either. Dutch cities that are a fifth of that size still get regular trains and buses until late in the evening.
That's just not true, and I'm a bit tired of the tendency online to blame "big bad boogeyman conspiracy" whenever it's convenient.
Yes, the auto and related industries have had huge impact on the design of our cities that now seems really unfortunate. But I don't think it was some big, evil master plan. People seem to forget that for a really long time people loved driving their cars.
Just compare old vs. new cities in the US. Older cities (think NYC, Boston, Chicago) generally are a lot more dense with comparatively great (though unfortunately not always well maintained) public transportation. When other "post WWII" cities boomed, though, people wanted space out in the burbs, they wanted a private car. It's only relatively recently (last 30 years or so) that there has really been a re-evaluation of all the downsides to that sprawl and being trapped in long commutes.
In Austin, TX, our public transportation is generally really bad and there has been a huge push to build more of it. At this point though, the geography of Austin and existing land use patterns make the cost of doing so enormous. And we've built a ton of protected bike lanes in the past couple decades, but it's also been over 105F the past two weeks, so it's not hard to see why a car is pretty essential here.
Yes, I also wish things had developed differently. But comparing Amsterdam with most cities in the US is just a silly exercise in general that accomplishes nothing.
And on the other side, you're going to think I'm the exception to your rule where most people apparently like being out on the road.
From my subjective experience, driving appears to be an experience that induces some amount of stress that one would prefer to avoid if at all possible. For example, I don't know anybody that's psyched when they forget to pick something up on their last grocery trip and relish the chance to drive back to the shop for it. When remote work was beginning to take off, most people I knew fortunate enough to have that kind of job were just excited to not have to drive in to work every day. I could go on, but suffice it to say, people don't seem to enjoy to drive anywhere, from what I have observed. The destination is usually the thing to be excited by, as in: being finished with the drive there.
And from what I have observed, this generalization has been mostly true in the suburbs and even in small towns.
> Yes, the auto and related industries have had huge impact on the design of our cities that now seems really unfortunate. But I don't think it was some big, evil master plan.
I think I understand your perspective, but why does it have to be an evil master plan? Large corporations aim to make more money for shareholders. If a car/oil corporation can advance a car-oriented agenda through lobbying, PR campaigns, etc, then that's the obvious choice and they'll do it. Clearly it's not an evil plan, it's just business.
And now, those same companies are massively enriched and in the position to lobby and create PR campaigns even more effectively to protect their profits. Again, it's just business.
The whole frustration of the poster you replied to was that these companies are powerful, influential in politics, and are able to stifle the political will to make changes that improve cities by de-emphasizing cars. This isn't to say that there's a boogeyman, a conspiracy of people pulling the strings. It's just to say that corporations advocate for profit above public good or public health.
So yes, of course there's no conspiracy. But also, these companies are not only directly responsible for the (perhaps unintended) adverse affects of cars on cities' public transit, but also are doubly responsible for the influence they exert every day on the political system to keep the status quo.
Exactly. Also consider that Exxon knew in 1978 about the risk of global warming, they briefly considered warning society about it, realised that would cut into their profit, and instead decided on a big misinformation campaign to discredit the idea of global warming. To them, that's just business. They're not sitting there twirling their mustaches and laughing diabolically, they're sitting there looking at their spreadsheets.
And it's undeniable that the US government has had very close ties with the oil industry over the decades. Wars have been started and governments have been overthrown over oil.
I don't normally like big conspiracy talk, but I think it's naive to think that the oil industry is innocent of some of the problems the US is facing. I think they're one of the major driving forces behind several major problems. All just to maximise profits.
Miami is 4,800/sqkm and 6 million across the urban area.
Seems that Miami could have an urban transit system similar to Amsterdam.
Florida is denser than France and Spain
That said, you're not rallying anyone to the cause of improving that situation by calling the place a hellhole. Some empathy would go a long way to getting people to see the problem.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@strongtowns
This is why it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that cities take urban planning VERY seriously instead of letting developers do whatever they please. Urban planning is not a private matter. It is a matter of the common good and concerns not just the public today, but the public of the future.
The US made a radical "bet" (under the heavy influence of the auto lobby) on cars, and this has been, in retrospect, a bad move in many ways. Something more balanced would have been better. Now, this doesn't mean we can do nothing. We can make conservative or incremental improvements. We can influence the direction infrastructure and development take. We just have to keep in mind that radical and sweeping changes are easy to demand, but difficult and even uncharitable to make in practice. Comparing Amsterdam to most of America is folly. The two do not afford the same opportunities for urban planning.
My guess is most of HN is relatively pro-market pro-business so this probably won't be controversial, but this seems like the type of thing that a government will regret in ten years. So many municipalities would kill for a large number of people to come in, pay locals and local taxes, and then leave without using any social services. I realize Amsterdam is very wealthy, but feel like we've seen countless times cities discouraging visitors and then surprised when tax revenues drop.
Or, to put it in more financial terms, the cost of compensating for the negative effects of these tourists might be much higher than the tax revenue they bring in.
As someone who currently lives in NYC it would be great for me if tourists stopped coming to the city and magically the level of restaurants, sanitation, and public transit didnt change at all.
This is in opposition to your quote. Mayor Halsema said the tourists are at international chains, you're talking about paying locals. Money spent at these chains isn't contributing to the local economy as much as actually spending money at local shops is.
It’s not as much as local businesses but it’s more than nothing, unless the mayors claim is that those international businesses are negative impacts on the economy, in which case why not ban them rather than the cruise ships?
I’d guess the cruise ships are just an easy scapegoat because they are considered unfashionable.
Thousand and thousands of people arriving, confused and not necessarily having been excited about Amsterdam in particular, and then leaving within 8 hours?
Seems believable that cruise tourists are unlike any other type.
I imagine the same would apply to ppl arriving in Amsterdam - being aware of activities to do in the city.
They are unlike other tourists, but I wouldn't jump to assuming that's a bad thing.
Care to cite some examples? Because I certainly can't think of any.
Sure, tourism can be a double edged sword, but all the cities I can think of that want to limit tourism (e.g. Venice, Barcelona, etc.) don't appear to have had any negative effects from their campaigns to limit tourism. If anything, these cities are trying to keep the "soul" of their cities intact, to keep their appeal that attracted so many tourists in the first place.
It's possible to do by like, jacking up hotel taxes 100x, but nobody actually does that. Maybe some little town, I dunno.
Sounds like you're describing Downtown SF. I imagine right now many in the city wish the area had been less reliant on people coming in from elsewhere.
They tried before and failed, I hope they try again.
Having visited Amsterdam over the last 14 years semi-regularly for work, one of the things that struck me is after AirBnB took off, things quickly got worse there.. Even in off-peak seasons it's just a nightmare downtown.
There is no affordable space in the inner city anymore. Nothing. When I grew up tourism wasn't a thing, now it looks as though the whole city has essentially been given over to it with everything else secondary. Really happy to see Halsema make some sensible moves to curb this. But it's lots too late and probably way too little.
Moving the red light district into a building isn't going to end well. Right now it's out in the open, it's easy to see and monitor... Putting it somewhere kind of out of sight isn't the way.. I do understand that the cops are stretched thin between lots of places. But there has to be a better way.
Closing the weed shops is also not going to end well.
Both these things, the sex tourism and the weed tourism have one thing in common. Tourism.
Limit that.
Also once your neighbouring countries legalize weed you'll find the tourism for that spreads out.
Weed shops always were legally grey for several reasons.
But I'd rather have them limit the tourism first, that would automatically reduce prostitution and drug sales to the point that those industries would likely shrink with some reduced crime as a side benefit.
When there's a will there's a way. I think what will end up happening is that locals will just buy the drugs, and then sell to the tourists.
Pushing something underground or away, or making it illegal etc... It never works, it only makes it worse.
The war on drugs has lost, and if anything I hope that it's shown us that with both drugs and sex work, you can never stop it, so the goal should be harm reduction.
That said.. I do like the idea of taxing flights into Schiphol. Especially those from England.
Every single time I go, it feels like the English are just the worst offenders.
The tourist arriving with ships already have paid for their board and food. So they are less likely to spend money in the city. And then it is possibly they go on tours run by the ship thus most money not going to locals.
In the end many cities in Europe especially don't need this type of tourism. They have enough organic self-grown much more profitable tourism already. Does not mean there isn't some places where local economy depends on it. And even then cruise companies are trying to capture also the gains there.
Although perhaps it would be effectively the same as outright banning the ships.
I think e.g. the Venice port is owned by the state.
But maybe it's not worth the hassle to figure out for some cities.
Over 5 million tourists visit Amsterdam a year[1]; only a small fraction of that probably come from cruise ships. If banning those ships improves local quality of life and the tourist experience for non-cruise tourists, then it's probably a net win in terms of tax revenues (besides everything else).
People were complaining that the city had turned into a theme park, and that's not fun for the people living there, but ultimately also less attractive to many tourists, who prefer a vibrant, living city, and want to taste the local atmosphere.
A cruise ship can be a giant loophole that leaves all externalities to others. Even AirBNB model leaves more money to locals.
You want to discourage lower value visitors after a certain point. Cruise passengers would spend far less than land visitors in Amsterdam.
Then in ten years, they can reassess and easily re-open the dock. I don't think you're right, but there isn't really a big risk here even if you are right. Even if the dock gets repurposed to something else, if this somehow devastates the city's economy, it is easy to reverse.
People will still want to come to Amsterdam, even more so if they weren't able to stop there on a cruise. The only thing that can really stop tourists from coming to Amsterdam is if its reputation somehow falls below its historical postcard allure and libertine reputation. The main threat to that is the city becoming so packed with rowdy tourists, although even still the hotels and hostels will all be full, just not able to charge $100/night for a hostel bed or $300/night for a tiny bedroom like they can now. But if you're right and the city reverses course, I am sure that the cruise ships will be fighting each other for a spot.
Barcelona is trying to limit them also [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/09/a-plague-of-lo...
For example, Zandvoort (which is not Amsterdam, and separated from it by another city, Haarlem) gets branded Amsterdam Beach. The most egregious example I've seen was the Frisian lakes, which is great for sailing and other activities on and around water, got called the Amsterdam Lake District, despite being in a completely different province and on the opposite side of the IJsselmeer.
But if that helps tourists to visit some other parts of the country instead of just drinking themselves senseless in Amsterdam, I guess that's good. Though the branding really rubs me the wrong way.
Set a required minimum risk-weighted profit to the city of 2x or so. Then solicit bids for binding long-term contracts from cruise companies, with the stipulation that their generators stay off while in port. If no bids meet the minimum, shelve the whole thing. Otherwise, proceed and enjoy the boost to the city treasury.
Of course in the real world this would be a political process and highly vulnerable to corruption by private interests.
Vile machines, I wish more places would ban them.
The pollution they put out irritates my lungs and all for what, consumerism and global trade?
They're not supposed to run on the bunker oil near shore, but the stink from them just idling there is always exceptionally bad.
Incidentally, we also learned one time that if you get too close (on the order of hundreds of yards) to a docked cruise ship the USCG will appear with a large deck-mounted machine gun trained on your bow while ordering you to change course. So not only are the cruise ships making the air disgusting for everyone nearby, our tax dollars are spent guarding them from terrorist attacks while doing so too.
I'm sure container ships are disgusting too.. but they don't generally sit docked idling for ages where people are doing recreation.
I've been wanting to take sailing lessons but I'm worried my queasiness will rear it's ugly head.
Short day sails are kind of the worst because it's enough to get sick, but not long enough to get over the "sea legs" hump.
Do overnights, long weekends, sleep/live on the boat. That helps me significantly.
I haven't tested this on the boat yet but fasting seemed to help on my last cross-country train trip. It's on my list of things to try sailing. Fasting is basically being deep in ketosis AIUI, so maybe just going sailing on a keto diet would make a difference. I was _trying_ to make myself motion sick on that train trip where I hadn't eaten for 48hrs, and there wasn't even a hint of nausea, it's a very different head space.
And I say it as someone with no interest in cruises.
Also, it's fun that Amsterdam pretends it does not like certain type of tourist unless they spend money in museums but it clearly caters to the "sex and drugs go crazy in AMS" tourist.
Much to the point that it's shocking to other tourists who are simply visiting it as one more city.
I haven't lived there in over a decade, but even then, they were at least talking about programs to deal with the "worst" tourists for a few demographics. And all the while, they were putting in lots of money to make things nicer for the kind of tourists they like. While I was there, it seemed like a popular and economically successful set of policies. I'm guessing they still are.
That’s a totally coherent position to hold, even if it’s difficult to encode into policy.
I'm pretty sure that a city banning private jets would be orders of magnitude less impactful and more media-stuntworty than banning cruise ships.
This posts triggers the hell out of me. Amsterdam has been trying it's hardest for _at least_ 5 years and probably a lot longer to get rid of these types of tourists. With english bachelor party goer's in particular.
Every 2 hours a dirty cruise ship comes there, hundreds of people rushing through the stairs to take their photos then going back on the same (narrow) passage where everybody usually travels.
They don't have time for trying out the amazing restaurants, walks and hotels it provides.
may be useful for small or up-and-coming destinations
> Captain Nico explains that the Nadir subscribes to something called GPS: "This Global Positioning System is using the satellites above to know the position at all times, which gives this data to the computer." It emerges that when we're not negotiating ports and piers, a kind of computerized Autocaptain pilots the ship.
This line in particular made me chuckle.