Stag and hen party bookings surge as bid to stop boozy bashes backfires

07 April 2023 , 18:36

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Efforts to put off partying in Amsterdam have failed (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Attempts to persuade stag and hens not to visit the historic cities of York and Edinburgh are “backfiring spectacularly”.

While calls by Dutch officials to ask similar British groups to ‘stay away’ are also having the opposite effect.

It is said bookings are up 50 per cent for York, Edinburgh and Amsterdam with a 4306% surge in bookings to the Netherlands’ capital.

In York one firm claimed the northern city has more bookings than Barcelona.

York Central Labour MP, Rachael Maskell, has slammed the groups who book out accommodation saying they make her “blood boil”.

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Some city centre houses charge up to £1000 a night on the website for large parties in the peak hen and stag summer months, it was claimed.

Amsterdam's red light district is a magnet for party animals (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The MP says the number of “stag and hen houses” available for rent are pricing out families who want to live in the city and putting them off coming into the city centre.

“These are highly organised affairs, which are designed to maximise profits while marketing York as a ‘party city’.

“When I have families desperate for a home to live in, it makes my blood boil, that people are using the valuable resource of a home to simply make themselves rich.

“When this happens families are turned off travelling into York and we get hit economically too.”

York officials are planning an online guide that would encourage groups to book tables in restaurants in the hope that eating more food would control the booze.

But the boss of stag and hen do provider ‘Last Night of Freedom’ Matt Mavir said: “We have taken more bookings for York than Berlin and Barcelona combined.

“If the plan was to make groups feel unwanted then it has failed miserably.

“York has instead grown into one of Europe’s most popular hen do destination.”

The firm’s managing director also said figures for Amsterdam are up 50 per cent “So clearly the message to ‘stay away’ isn’t getting through,” he said.

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“The campaign is backfiring spectacularly and the psychology behind that is obvious - if you tell people no, they just want it more.”

Lucy Thornton