Amsterdam Bans Beer Bike Tours

The city of Amsterdam is taking aim at unruly tourists with a new law prohibiting beer bike tours within the city center.

Not to be confused with a leisurely, guided cycling ride through the countryside that includes a few carefully curated stops at local breweries, Amsterdam’s beer bikes are 12 (or more)-passenger vehicles that are essentially outfitted to serve as mobile bars.

Beer bikes, which are growing increasingly popular at urban destinations around the world, allow participants to see the area from the comfort of their own bar stool/bike seat as long as they keep pedaling. And since there’s a keg on board, it’s easy enough to experience the destination through a booze-fueled haze.

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But, according to locals, the bikes are a nuisance.

Not only are they large and cumbersome, blocking traffic in some of the most crowded city zones, they also attract participants who are often boisterous, or worse. Some shout and scream, some urinate in public, while others still cause damage at area residences.

One local caught a group of beer bike tourists tearing out the shrubs in front of her house.

“These kinds of things happen all the time,” she told The Guardian. “It’s worse when they throw up in your plant boxes because you can’t rinse it away– you have to scoop it out.”

Now Amsterdam is cracking down. On Wednesday, it enacted a ban throughout the entire inner city, after ruling against four companies that offer the service, reports the N.Y. Post.

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“The ban is justified because of the combination of traffic congestion, disorderly behavior and crowded city center,” noted the court ruling.

Amsterdam has been aggressively floating a number of ideas to try to curb its ever-growing number of inbound tourists, including the possibility of increasing its tourism tax and it is not the only European city grappling with the side-effects of too many tourists. Barcelona has also enacted numerous initiatives to curb rowdy and boisterous crowds.

To help prevent what is frequently being called over tourism, tour operator Intrepid Travel has launched a new campaign focusing on off-peak-season travel and revealing new or more "off the beaten path" tourist sites.

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