Netherlands received 165, 000 Indian visitors in 2017, reflecting a growth of 31 per cent over 2016, and expects a 25 per cent growth in Indian arrivals in 2018. “India is currently sharing the second position with Brazil as fastest growing market for us. Russia is at the top as fastest growing market. We expect to maintain the growth momentum from India. We have already received over 67,000 visitors from India until May 2018,” Carola Muller – van Rijn, Global Travel Trade Manager, Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions (NBTC) Holland Marketing, a public-private partnership, said on the sidelines of a Sales Mission in New Delhi recently. The Mission also travelled to Mumbai and Bangalore to showcase its comprehensive product profile as well as to understand the requirements of the Indian travelllers. Holland Sales Mission 2018 includes participation from several private players from the Netherlands, including Lovers Canal Cruises, Efteling Theme Park, Henri Willig Cheese Farm, Madurodam Theme Park, and ITO Tours. According to her, India is currently not in top 10 source markets but it is closer to top 10. Currently, 17 million people visit the Netherlands annually.
Responding to a question over the expected growth, Muller said that the Board looks at different factors such as direct connectivity, capacity and economic ability of the destination to estimate the growth. “One of the reasons for the rise in the number of visitors is growing direct connectivity from India to Amsterdam and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines beginning operations between Mumbai and Amsterdam will also add to the number of visitors from India to Netherlands,” she said.
She said Indians like the city life. “City life and visiting the city is one of the pull factors for Indians. We saw 74,000 Indian visiting Amsterdam in 2017 which is a big number. There are obviously other interesting products that we offer. We mainly focus on leisure travel. We do see the most of the travelers coming to Holland is leisure,” she said and added that the average length of stay for Indians in Netherlands is four-days.
Talking about the marketing and promotional activities, she said the Board is looking expanding its activities in emerging markets. “We would also look at joint promotion with likes of Mercury Travel and Thomas cook. We are doing some trade advertising as well. We are going with our in-house training programme. We have also attended some trade fairs in India,” she said informing that the Budget for four emerging markets – Russia, Brazil, India and China – is euro 500, 000. Carola is responsible for driving traffic from these markets.
