That is exactly my point. The OP read like a moaning Amsterdammer. I see it a lot: residents of that city complaining about the tourist crowds. I think a better idea would be a very high tourist tax -- like 100 EUR per day charged via hotels etc. (Business travelers would be exempt.) Then, you can exclude all of the low end tourists that few people want in their crowded cities -- they can enjoy second tier cities, or day trips from a nearby city. I cannot find it now, but there is a group of small Italian seaside villages that implemented something similar to limit the number of tourists. My point: Go for quality of visitors, not quantity. The tourist tax can be used to improve tourist infrastructure.
That's a terrible idea. Why the insinuation that only very rich visitors are "high-quality", and that "low-end" tourists are icky and undesirable?
I'm a university student, and I enjoy traveling by myself, as long as I can do it on a reasonable budget. In North American cities (and in plenty of other countries), I pretty much blend in with the crowd, am not loud, annoying or obtrusive. What exact quality is imbued into someone who's willing to throw away EUR100/day that everyone else doesn't have? Doing this in large, world-class cities would turn any major destination into VIP hangout clubs for rich people. Not to mention that it's probably flawed financially - even if tiny towns that are over-capacity with tourists might be able to justify it, enormous cities will be forcing their businesses to lose money. Fewer people would travel to the city on account on it being too expensive, and the people who do travel would spend less money since they're paying the tax.
I'm very glad I don't live in Amsterdam, commuting there is bad enough. I'm actually trying to convince people to visit, among other places, the city I live in. Spreading the tourists around more will make everyone happier. Including the tourists.
I never once heard that about Amsterdam. The YouTube channel NotJustBikes goes on and on about how amazing is the bicycle infra in Amsterdam (and other cities in the Netherlands). Can you be more specific?
Oh don't get me wrong, the infrastructure is amazing! Commuting to Amsterdam is mostly just bad compared to commuting to other well-connected places. There's only so many times you can get stuck behind a group of tourists blocking all the check-out gates simultaneously for 10s of minutes on end before it gets on your nerves.
Then don't distinguish. Both pay the same. The goal here is not to increase the cost of doing non-tourism business in your city. Another idea: Allow people travelling on business to apply for a refund. Example: It seems weird to charge a salesperson going to see their client. Business people use city resources and infrastructure in a vastly different way. For example: They don't use (limited) cultural resources in the same way.
