Managing overtourism in collaboration: The case of ‘From Capital City to Court City’, a tourism redistribution policy project between Amsterdam and The Hague

Abstract

This article goes deeper into the need for redistribution of tourists at highly popular destinations suffering from overtourism on the one hand and the added value of collaboration on the other. The article shows the possibilities and constraints secondary destinations are facing which seek to promote themselves with the assistance of the tourism redistribution policy of a primary destination that suffers from overtourism. The study focusses on the tourism cooperation agreement ‘From Capital City to Court City’ between Amsterdam and The Hague in the Netherlands. The research was conducted by means of a mixed method approach (desk research, expert interviews and a visitor survey with 155 visitors assessed). The agreement has moderate success, but the balance between cooperation and competition is difficult. To some extent this is due to the fact that tourists expect a destination (in our case, The Hague) to have and promote its own, distinguishable profile that becomes a reason to travel, not related to the primary destination (here Amsterdam). Further, it is very difficult to make visitors change their minds about places to visit and activities to do during their stay, because they have little time and do not feel like changing plans. If they do, they might add rather than substitute days for visiting a secondary destination. A pre-travel promotion of an integrated product on the one hand with distinguishable DNAs on the other hand is recommended but challenging, since this implies a bridging of intrinsically opposite concepts. • Fighting overtourism through agreement proves moderately successful. • Primary tourism destinations collaborate on (over)flow to secondary destinations. • Promotion of a destination's DNA has a different impact before and during the visit. • Visitor redistribution is about linking products and distribution of benefits.