The Dutch tourism industry fears that this year will turn out even worse than 2020, when the global outbreak of the coronavirus brought international travel to a halt. The number of foreign tourists and business travelers will be more than a quarter lower in 2021 than last year, estimates the Netherlands Bureau for Tourism & Congresses (NBTC). It will likely take more than two years for the industry to fully recover from the pandemic.
The organization that promotes the Netherlands as a holiday and travel destination is counting on 5,4 million foreign tourists this year. That is 26 percent less than in 2020. Compared to 2019, this is a decrease of almost three quarters (73 percent).
“The picture is quite dramatic, it appears to be even worse than last year,” says general manager Jos Vranken. “You see that macroeconomists in the media paint the picture that the economy has recovered. That is a correct observation, but under the hood you see major differences between sectors. Then the visitor economy has not yet recovered.”
The new estimates are much more pessimistic than at the beginning of this year. The corona virus flared up again and again in 2021, making holiday trips from European countries to the Netherlands difficult for a long time.
Even after the introduction of the EU-wide corona passport, the Dutch tourism industry continues to suffer from the pandemic. Travelers from outside the European Union who have not been fully vaccinated will still face an entry ban unless their country is on a list of nations deemed safe. The United States is missing from that list, according to Vranken the fourth largest country of origin for foreign visitors to the Netherlands.
A bright spot is domestic tourism. A holiday in their own country was popular among the Dutch, partly because the constantly changing corona rules across the border caused uncertainty. The number of domestic stays in hotels, campsites, holiday parks or other holiday destinations has increased by 30 percent compared to 2020. But this was not nearly enough to compensate for the loss of foreign tourists.
It will take until 2024 to reach pre-pandemic numbers. A major pain point is the lack of business travelers. “International conferences and meetings are now possible again, but it is a market with a long lead time. If there is an application today, it often takes two to four years until the congress," says Vranken, who calculates that these travelers spend up to five times as much as a domestic tourist.
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