In reaction to a viral video featuring two Knokke residents denouncing tourists for failing to meet the "exacting standards" of the affluent seaside town, more than 45,000
individuals have enlisted on social media to visit the Belgian coastal destination on Saturday, equipped with "shorts and a cooler."
Knokke Off, a popular TV series portraying the lives of local youth, achieved remarkable success in both Belgium and the Netherlands. Seeking insights into what makes their town exceptional, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf conducted street interviews in Knokke. Two local women, captured on video, expressed their dissatisfaction with tourists who "display improper behavior," arrive "wearing shorts," and "carry coolers" instead of dining in restaurants.
The women asserted, "Knokke maintains lofty standards; this is not a place for donning shorts or toting coolers. The residences here are high-priced, and everything comes at a premium." The video quickly spread across social media, provoking reactions ranging from annoyance to amusement.
In response to this footage, an individual established a Facebook event urging people to converge on Knokke clad in shorts and equipped with coolers, all for the sake of "fun," as the page stated. Yet, the jest gained momentum, and the event's popularity skyrocketed. Within the initial two days, 17,000 people committed to heading to Knokke's beach on August 26. By Thursday afternoon, the number of attendees had surged to over 45,000.
Anticipating the potential influx of "cool box tourists," the city of Knokke-Heist revealed plans to proactively deploy additional police personnel on Saturday.
This occurrence draws parallels to a smaller-scale protest in 1990. The then-mayor of Knokke, Leopold Lippens, introduced the term "frigobox tourists" to criticize a portion of the visitors frequenting the city. He emphasized his preference for "quality over quantity" in terms of tourism, stressing that Knokke should not metamorphose into a "zoo." In response to his comments, around 20 "cool box tourists" congregated in the town. Photo by Ben Bender, Wikimedia commons.