Marketing pundits and comics have produced what they call ‘better’ versions of the sobering Amsterdam stay away campaign to dissuade nuisance Brits planning to party and take drugs.

Although the official council campaign, launched last Wednesday, was picked up by media worldwide and welcomed by red light district residents fed up with nuisance, there was some local criticism at its lack of humour.

An alternative version created by comic Arjen Lubach said it would be fairer to spell it out that tourists intending to create ‘troubles’ should ‘typhus off’.

Lars Duursma, communication coach and campaign strategist, produced his own version at the weekend, voiced by Brits in the red light district moaning about expensive beer with too much head, early closing times and too much culture.

‘I came here to party but all I ended up doing was drinking oat milk lattes and visiting high-price museums,’ they say. ‘Don’t come here! Amsterdam is the worst place to party!’

Baltics

Duursma told Dutch News that he would prefer the council to focus on actual measures such as reducing opening hours but that any advertising campaign should not just be negative. ‘On the message, I would also give a positive image about what people can find: the culture, museums, and the history,’ he said.

‘On the messenger, governments telling people what to do isn’t the best, especially if you are talking about people who misbehave. Use people like them.’

He suggested that a Lubach joke telling asylum seekers to ‘try Denmark’ could be another way to run a tourist campaign although telling tourists ‘to go to the Baltics would be just as problematic!’

The campaign video

Measures

Amsterdam city council stresses that the Stay Away campaign is targeted against nuisance tourism in general rather than one country and works with a package of measures including reduced opening hours, starting last weekend, a ban on smoking cannabis in public and reduced alcohol sales.

‘The campaign starts in the UK,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘During the next months, the campaign will be further developed, and it will also be aimed at potential nuisance-causing visitors from the Netherlands and other EU-countries.

‘A considerable group of visitors from the UK come to Amsterdam. A part of this group is strongly represented in the nightlife in the city centre accompanied with more than average nuisance behaviour. By starting in the UK, we can gain good experiences with the campaign and evaluate it well. Visitors will remain welcome, but not if they misbehave and cause nuisance.’

Amsterdam police told Dutch News that since it had limited police capacity, it supported Amsterdam city’s dissuasion campaign. ‘We have to weigh up what we use our capacity for,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘If someone commits a crime, we will act against it. We prefer not to use our scarce capacity on nuisance-causing tourists. That is why we support the campaign of the municipality.’