As of the first day of this year, visitors to the capital of the Netherlands are required to pay a higher tourism tax. To stay for multiple days in Amsterdam, whether in shared accommodation or one of the hundreds of houseboats, visitors will need to pay €3, or approximately $3.25, per person, per night in addition to 7 percent of their room rate. This increase makes it the highest tourism tax requirement of any European city, as well as the only city to charge both a percentage and a flat fee.

Elsewhere in Europe, Berlin charges 5 percent of the cost of most hotel rooms, while a room in a 5-star hotel incurs a tourism tax of €7 (or $7.71) per night, which made it last year’s highest tax in Europe before the Amsterdam tax.

Although Amsterdam officials denied the implementation of the tax as a move to deter visitors from coming to the city, it’s hard to see it as anything but a strategy to preserve the city from tourist destruction, especially when another new rule went into effect Jan. 1, banning groups larger than 15 people from entering the city’s medieval center.

Instead, members of the city council consider the tax a way to keep the city safe, clean and in a good state.