The seaside resort of Scheveningen will be branded as The Hague Beach in contacts with foreign companies and organisations, city alderman Karsten Klein told local broadcaster Omroep West on Monday.

At the weekend it emerged Klein described the resort as The Hague Beach in a document on city branding up to 2020, generating protests from locals and former residents.

However, there are no plans to change the name officially, Klein told the broadcaster. The aim is to highlight the ‘attractive combination’ of The Hague and the seaside, Klein said. This, in turn, will bring in more tourists, companies and visitors.

‘I’ve had a lot of positive reactions from companies who want to attract more visitors to Scheveningen but also from worried locals who feel the town’s history is being negated,’ Klein told Omroep West. ‘Scheveningen will remain Scheveningen, although we will talk about The Hague Beach on trade missions with the aim of boosting Scheveningen itself.’

Junior education minister Ronald Plasterk is among those to dismiss the idea, describing it as a ‘slippery slope’. ‘I was born in Scheveningen, not on The Hague Beach,’ he said on Twitter.

The process of rebranding places to attract more tourist has been going on in Amsterdam for some time.

The city describes the seaside resort of Zandvoort as Amsterdam beach and Muiderslot castle in Muiden as Amsterdam castle. The Alkmaar cheese market, some 40 kilometers from the capital by car, even promotes itself as Amsterdam cheese market.