‘Spookhotel’ exposes contract gaps
Reports surfaced that a hotel in Amsterdam is holding roughly 600 empty rooms while the city faces acute housing shortages, raising questions about how municipal contracts with investors are written and who bears accountability. The row has sparked debate about contractual oversight and wethouder responsibility for temporary housing procurement. (x.com)
A 33-floor hotel tower across the water from Amsterdam Central Station has sat dark with almost 600 finished rooms while Amsterdam’s housing shortage keeps worsening, and by January 2026 protesters were calling it the city’s “spookhotel.” (nos.nl, at5.nl) The building was supposed to open in 2018 as the Maritim Hotel, a four-star conference hotel with a 4,500-person congress center, but delays pushed that date back again and again. (nos.nl, at5.nl) The owner is Union Investment, a German investor, and the operator was supposed to be Maritim, a German hotel chain that had signed a 50-year lease and development agreement. In October 2025, Maritim walked away and Union Investment said it had received written notice terminating both deals. (at5.nl) Union Investment said the tower was basically complete apart from a few remaining tasks, and blamed the long delay on water damage during a water-pressure test that it said had already been repaired. That left Amsterdam with a nearly finished hotel shell and no hotel company willing to open it. (at5.nl) The reason the empty rooms became political is simple: Amsterdam has had a hotel stop since 2016, so this is one of the last big hotel projects that was still allowed through. In a city that blocks most new hotel supply, an already-permitted tower is unusually valuable to investors. (nos.nl, at5.nl) That same permit is also the city’s main defense for why it cannot just flip the building into housing next week. Housing alderman Steven van Weyenberg said in October 2025 that the site has a hotel permit, not a residential one, and that changing course would take years. (at5.nl) Van Weyenberg also said the tower was physically built as a hotel, not as apartments, and pointed to the 4,500-person congress center and residential building-code issues. His argument was that if the city wants lights on quickly, the fastest route is still finding another hotel operator. (at5.nl) Critics hear that and ask a different question: if Amsterdam is spending public money on temporary housing and emergency shelter elsewhere, why are contracts and permits written so tightly that a tower with roughly 600 rooms can sit unused? The anger is less about one building than about who wrote the rules, who signed the deals, and who is supposed to fix the gap when reality changes. (at5.nl, nos.nl) The backdrop is a Dutch housing system that has been trying to curb insecurity, not expand it: the national government moved to abolish most temporary rental contracts from July 1, 2024, while keeping narrow exceptions for groups like students and urgent seekers. That makes every bottleneck in temporary housing procurement more politically visible, because cities have fewer easy workarounds than before. (rijksoverheid.nl) So the “spookhotel” fight is really about a chain of decisions. A city limited new hotels, an investor built one of the last permitted towers, an operator quit after years of delay, and now elected officials are being asked why a building designed for short stays cannot be used when long-term residents need rooms. (nos.nl, at5.nl, at5.nl) Unless Amsterdam rewrites permits, renegotiates with the owner, or finds a legal temporary-use model that fits national rental rules, the tower stays trapped between two markets. It is too hotel-shaped to become housing fast, and too empty to stop symbolizing a city that can count 600 rooms but not use them. (at5.nl, at5.nl, rijksoverheid.nl)
