Why the banner exists in the first place.
Under EU rules that apply across the Netherlands, a site must ask before setting any cookie that is not strictly necessary for the site to function. That request is the banner. It is not a courtesy, it is a legal requirement, and it is why nearly every site now shows one on a first visit rather than a handful choosing to.
The requirement covers the cookie itself, not only the data collected through it, which is why the banner appears before a single page has properly loaded rather than after. A site cannot legally set a tracking cookie first and ask permission afterwards, so the banner sits at the very front of the visit by design.
What is actually behind the buttons.
Strictly necessary cookies keep a shopping basket filled or a login session active and cannot legally require consent, since the site would not function without them. Analytics cookies count visits and measure which pages get used, useful to the site owner rather than to you directly. Marketing and advertising cookies build a profile of your browsing across multiple sites for targeted ads, the category most people mean when they say they want fewer cookies.
A fourth, smaller category covers functional cookies, remembering a language choice or a font size preference between visits, which sit somewhere between strictly necessary and purely optional. Most banners fold these into the same toggle as analytics rather than giving them their own separate switch, so declining non essential cookies usually resets small preferences like these too.
The fastest correct choice.
Look for a Reject All or Necessary Only button, usually sitting beside or below the larger Accept All button, sometimes styled smaller or in plainer text specifically because it draws less attention. That single click declines analytics and marketing cookies while leaving the strictly necessary ones in place, so the site still works exactly as intended. A well built banner offers this as a one click option; a poorly built one buries it inside a settings panel that takes a few extra clicks to reach.
What changes on the site once you decline.
Almost nothing, in practice. Browsing, searching, filling in a form and reading content all work identically with only strictly necessary cookies active, including looking through profiles filed under blonde or auburn and red hair. The only difference is invisible to you: the site's owner sees fewer analytics numbers, and no advertising network builds a cross site profile of that visit.
Handling repeat prompts sensibly.
A banner that reappears on every visit despite rejecting it before usually means the consent cookie itself was cleared, often by the same browser cleanup covered in clearing browser history, since a full clear removes the consent record along with everything else. This is normal and simply needs the same reject choice made again; it does not mean the earlier choice failed to register.
A browser extension built specifically to auto reject cookie banners can remove the repeated clicking entirely, answering the banner on your behalf the moment it appears rather than waiting for you to find the button each time. It is a small convenience rather than a necessity, worth adding only if the banners genuinely start to feel like friction on sites you visit often.
Cookie preference tools built into the browser itself.
Beyond the banner on each individual site, some browsers now offer a broader setting that applies a default answer automatically. Firefox's Total Cookie Protection isolates cookies to the site that set them by default, limiting cross site tracking even before a single banner is answered. Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention works similarly in the background, quietly reducing what a marketing cookie can do even on a site where Accept All was clicked without thinking.
These are worth knowing about precisely because they work whether or not a banner was answered carefully, catching some of the cases a rushed click on Accept All would otherwise leave wide open. None of them replace the banner itself, which remains the more direct and complete control, but they add a reasonable safety net underneath it.
Where this sits alongside a booking.
None of this changes how you reach our companions or check the rates for an evening arranged as night out somewhere around Jordaan. Declining non essential cookies is a five second habit that costs nothing on the pages you actually came to read, and it applies the same way whichever page on the site you land on first.
Treat the banner the same way each time, reject or necessary only wherever the option is offered, and the habit stops requiring any conscious thought within a week or two of consistent use, the same way remembering to lock a phone screen eventually stops feeling like a separate step at all.