Ian Silvera

Amsterdam’s lazy campaign against British tourists

A prostitute in Amsterdam's red light district (Credit: Getty images)

Amsterdam has launched a campaign telling rowdy Brits to stay away. Men between the age of 18 and 35 are being targeted with videos showing what happens to those who overindulge. Brits who search online for terms like ‘stag do’, ‘cheap Amsterdam accommodation’ and ‘pub crawl Amsterdam’ will be served with the warning adverts featuring tourists being locked up or hospitalised.

To put it in wrestling terms, we’ve well and truly become the ‘heels’ of Europe. Brexit, it seems, has catalysed the unfair ‘bad boy Brit’ persona of a sometimes sluggish, mostly uncultured and drunken nation which urinates and swears its way across the continent while ordering beige grub in slow and shouty English. Amsterdam welcomes 20 million tourists per year and has long been perceived as a haven of sex, drugs and biking – sometimes in that order. But now, it appears, the city’s authorities want to put off Brits.

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