I mean there were evenings where residents basically couldn't wholesale Street Light leave their homes anymore because the alleys were blocked," the city's deputy mayor, Udo Kock, told The Associated Press.On a recent Friday night, the problem was clearly evident.Kock acknowledges that not everybody is happy, but says many others are pleased that the city is tackling the tours. And she says that tourism is good for the business.Bobien van Aalst of the Dutch tour guide association Guidor slammed the ban on tours, not just to the red light district but to other historic parts of the city.

Amsterdam's Prostitution Information Center, which is housed in the same building as Proud, offers its own red light district tours."It could also be that now there are no guides that people just wander into the area themselves and gawk at the women behind the window and take photos because there is no one anymore to inform them how to behave or what the rules of the game are in this area," said a worker who goes by the name of Velvet and is the advocacy coordinator for Proud.The museum's manager, Natascha Flipsen, agrees that guided tours help educate the visitors not just about the history of the centuries-old red light district but also about how to treat the women who work there with respect.City Hall says that more than 1,000 tour groups per week now operate around the Old Church Square in the heart of the red light district. The first step in the new policy was taken Monday night in the red light district, with tours banned from 7 pm.

But the *** workers' union, Proud, questions whether banning tours will reduce tourist numbers and argues that guides educate visitors and encourage them to behave more respectfully toward the women.People who work in Amsterdam's industry question whether there are more tourists, or whether similar numbers are squeezing into a red light district that has shrunk in recent years as hundreds of the  workers' windows have been shuttered in an attempt to diversify the narrow streets.Tourists bathed in the red glow emanating from the windows and peep shows' neon lights, packed shoulder to shoulder as they shuffle through the alleys in Amsterdam's red light district."I mean it's like in Paris if you're forbidding (tours) to go to the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower," she said. The total ban on guided tours, which is planned to come into full force on Jan 1 next year, is another step in the city's campaign to reduce the problems associated with over-tourism and part of a broader package of measures reining in tours in the city.