Dutch windmill village to charge tourists an entry fee

Would you pay a fee to see these windmills?

Only about 100 people live in the historic Dutch village of Zaanse Schans, but it gets a lot more visitors than that!

Last year, 2.6 million tourists came to see its famous windmills, but the local council say this is far too many.

It has announced that from spring 2026 it will charge every visitor from outside the area the equivalent of £15 to enter.

This is to try to control the numbers, with the money being used to help maintain the windmills and build new facilities like toilets.

Do you think it sounds like a good idea, or a bit unfair? Let us know in the comments.

It's very rare for a community to take such a measure, but the director of the village museum, Marieke Verweij, says it's necessary to protect the privacy of the people living there.

She said that visitors, "walk into their gardens, they walk into their houses, they knock on doors, they take pictures, they use selfie sticks to peek into the houses. So no privacy at all."

"We just don't have room for all these people," she added.

For tourists that pay the fee, it would give them admission to two things they currently have to pay for separately anyway – entry to the museum and to the inside of the windmills.

But some tourists who visit just to take pictures have said they wouldn't want to come if they had to pay.

Some shop and restaurant owners in the village aren't happy with the idea either.

In some local shops, staff wear traditional costumes and have demonstrations of local crafts, but they worry this won't be enough to bring visitors if they have to pay so much money to look around.

Sterre Schaap who co-runs the gift shop said: "It's awful. It will mean that people who don't have a big wallet won't be able to come here. It will mean that we will lose a lot of our shoppers."

The village shops, where staff wear traditional outfits, fear a big drop in business

Towns and cities changing visitors a tourist fee isn't a completely new idea.

Bhutan charges an entry fee per day to visit the country, and in the Italian city of Venice daytrippers are charged a €5 fee.

The Welsh government has also put forward the idea of holidaymakers staying overnight in certain parts of Wales having to pay a 'tourist tax' in the future.

What do you think, would you pay to visit tourist places? Let us know in the comments...