Amsterdam guide
Where We'd Stay
This page contains commercial links. Hotel rates can change quickly.
The 2026 money problem, stated plainly. Amsterdam is one of the most expensive cities in Europe to sleep in, and this year made it worse. The city's tourist tax is 12.5% of your room rate — the highest in Europe — and in January 2026 Dutch VAT on hotel stays more than doubled, from 9% to 21%. Together, tax now accounts for roughly a third of what you pay. A quoted €200 room lands nearer €225 once the city tax is added, on top of a rate that already went up.
The single most effective saving: stay in Noord or Oost, ten to fifteen minutes out on a free ferry or a tram, and pay roughly half.
Rates below are from one midweek October stay and move hard by season — much higher in tulip season, at King's Day and in summer. Treat them as “from roughly”.
Luxury
Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam
Herengracht 542, Canal Ring · from about €890
Six seventeenth and eighteenth-century canal palaces knocked together around a private garden, with an indoor pool and spa. The grandest address on the water.
Visit the Waldorf AstoriaDe L'Europe
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 2, on the Amstel · from about €730
A Leading Hotels of the World member with a terrace straight over the Amstel facing the Munttoren. The best location of any luxury hotel in the city.
Visit De L'EuropeCanal-house boutique
Ambassade Hotel
Herengracht 341 · from about €690
Fifty-six rooms spread across sixteen linked canal houses, hung with CoBrA paintings, and a library of signed first editions left by the writers who've stayed. The literary hotel of Amsterdam.
Visit the AmbassadeThe Toren
Keizersgracht 164 · from about €465
The affordable way into a genuine canal house: a garden, a terrace, and the Anne Frank House two minutes away.
Visit The TorenPulitzer Amsterdam
Prinsengracht · from about €670
Also worth knowing: Pulitzer Amsterdam occupies twenty-five seventeenth-century canal houses on the Prinsengracht.
Mid-range
Sir Albert Hotel
Albert Cuypstraat 2, De Pijp · from about €280
A converted diamond factory on the doorstep of the Albert Cuyp market, in the neighbourhood you actually want to eat in.
Visit Sir AlbertConscious Hotel Westerpark
Haarlemmerweg 10 · from about €195
The best value-for-review-score in the city: 8.5 from more than 2,600 guests, eco-built, beside Westerpark's culture complex, fifteen minutes' walk from the Jordaan.
Visit Conscious HotelBudget
Volkshotel
Wibautstraat 150, Oost · from about €107
A former newspaper headquarters with rooftop hot tubs, a sauna and a club in the basement. The cheapest credible private double in Amsterdam.
Visit VolkshotelClinkNOORD
Badhuiskade 3, Noord · from about €140 for a private double
A converted chemistry laboratory two minutes from the free ferry to Centraal. Private en-suite rooms as well as dorms, and female-only dorms.
Visit ClinkNOORDA warning about apartments
Amsterdam caps private holiday rentals at four guests and 30 nights a year — and from 1 April 2026 that drops to 15 nights a year in eight central neighbourhoods, including the Jordaan, both Grachtengordel districts, Haarlemmerbuurt, Nieuwmarkt and Oude Pijp. That is most of the pretty part of the city. Legal supply there is now very thin, and a listing that looks like a permanently rented flat rather than somebody's home may well be illegal — which means being cancelled on arrival. In those eight areas, book a hotel.
Prices checked September 2026. Confirm with the hotels before you travel.
Back to Amsterdam
