The picturesque Dutch village ready to charge tourists with entry fees

The historic Dutch village of Zaanse Schans is well known for its windmills, which many tourists want to see.

Indeed, these are some of the most picturesque examples in the Netherlands and easy to reach Amsterdam.

Last year, 2.6 million people visited – a gigantic amount for a small place with a resident population of only 100.

It’s far too many tourists, says local council. And so, he announced that from next spring, he would charge each visitor outside the area of ​​€ 17.50 ($ 20.50; £ 15) to enter, to try to control the figures.

It is very rare for a community to take such a measure, but speaking to Marieke Verweij, director of the village museum, you can understand why they want to do it.

“In 2017, we had 1.7 million visitors … This year, we are heading to 2.8 million,” she said. “But it’s a little place! We just have no room for all these people!”

Worse, says Marieke Verweij, visitors “often do not know that people live here, so they enter their gardens, they enter their homes, they pee in their gardens, they hit the doors, they take photos, they use selfie sticks to take a look in the houses. So no intimacy at all.”

I leave the museum and pass a car park of the coaches in the general direction of the windmills. I should probably not say that because it will just worsen the problem, but they are fabulous windmills.

One of them is made of wood and painted green. Another has thatched roof walls.

From time to time, the wind resumes and their sails run. It’s a beautiful view – and most people would like to have a photo with it.

Many people do that exactly, of course. Wind mills are actually far enough, but in the best places, visitors form very civilized selfie.

There is also a little queue on a small deck that leads to a channel towards the windmills. While I advanced, I hear Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Italian and Russian.

The plan is to bring everyone to book and pay online. The kind of thing you often have to do now to visit museums after the case.

The sweetener for tourists is that for the € 17.50, they are admitted to two things that they currently have to pay separately anyway – entry to the museum and inside windmills.

The first contains a painting of local windmills by Claude Monet Français, who visited in 1871.

If only half of the current figures continue to visit once the admission to the introduction, annual income will be around 24.5 million euros.

The Council plans to spend money on the maintenance of windmills and new infrastructure. New toilets, for example. But owners of stores and restaurants are not at all satisfied.

Stores, it should be said, are a bit of an attraction in itself. The staff are carrying traditional costumes in the cheese dairy, they demonstrate hooves in the shoe store.

And they are located inside old and beautiful wooden houses. The antique and gift shop for example, dates from 1623.

The planned entry accusation threatens the livelihoods of the retailers and owners of Zaanse Schans, explains Sterre Schaap. She commensurate the gift shop, which is called waste and treasures.

“It’s horrible. It will mean that people who do not have a big portfolio will not be able to come here,” says Schaap. “It will mean that we will lose a lot of our buyers.

“If you are with a family of four and you have a parking lot, it will be around 100 €. So people will not have a lot of budget for other things.”

I walk towards the windmills, in front of a young woman who photographs her friend and a couple from Germany who take a selfie.

On the balcony of one of the windmills, looking at the impressive flatness of Holland, I speak to Ishan of Canada. “I don’t know if I would pay the € 17.50 to come here. It’s a bit steep just to see a few windmills,” he said.

But Elisia, who is Albanian, grew up in Greece and now lives in the Netherlands, says that she would certainly pay this amount. “These villages, they are not so big and they lose their charm when there are so many tourists,” she said.

Steve, who is finished with his Massachusetts family in the United States, has made his calculations and can see the good side of the upcoming charge.

“People cheap like me,” says Steve, “look at the windmill and say” no, I’m not going to pay more to go “, but if everything is included, I would not hesitate.”

It would be a more complete experience, he said, and not a bad deal.

Agreement is also a sign of the time. Rachel Dodds, professor of tourism at the Metropolitan University of Toronto in Canada, underlines some comparable cases.

“Bhutan invoices entry fees a day to visit the country. Venice, of course, is probably the most famous with € 5 for day excursionus,” she said.

Meanwhile, the United States and the United Kingdom both charge travel or visa authorization costs so that foreign nationals visit them.

However, the villages that charge the entrance fees are still very rare. The other current examples are the private fishing village of Clovelly in Devon, England, the Civita of Medieval Bagnoregio and Correnno Plinio in Italy and Penglipuran in Bali, Indonesia.

While I wait for my bus to leave Zaanse Schans, a bunch of people arrive, dragging their credit cards to pay their rides.

Those who arrive in a few months will also dig prepaid entrance tickets.