Welcome to Holland
Tulips, windmills, cheese and famous painters—if you thought that’s all Holland is about, you are wrong. Arjan van Well, Director Destination Marketing & Markets at the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC) shares with us a fuller picture of Holland and his plans for NBTC in India.

Where does India stand in terms of importance as a market for NBTC? What are the other countries you are focusing on? To be honest, the Indian market is quite a small one for Holland. We estimate that in 2009 there would have been a 5 percent increase in the number of travelers from India, which would put the number at slightly over 50,000 visitors. However, what makes India important for us is that it is a growing market, even in the economically turbulent times.
The surrounding European countries are obviously the most important ones for Holland. The number one market in terms of the number of arrivals is Germany—for 2009, we estimate the number to be a little over 2.7 million. Besides Germany, the other logical markets are Belgium, France and UK. For the people in these countries, a short break to Holland is very convenient. Our beaches are especially attractive to the Germans.
Apart from the nearby markets, the US is very important—it ranks number four. A lot of business travelers come in from the US. Historically, travel between the US or these other European countries and Holland started much before travel between Holland and India or China.
Our marketing efforts, of course, reflect in this too. We obviously allocate higher budgets to places from where we expect a lot of visitors. However, there is also a subjective decision involved. For instance, even though India doesn’t provide high numbers right now, we are focused on it because of its potential for the future—not just for tourism, but also to support the growing trade interests between the two countries.
Within Asia, we have been in China for the past five years. For 2009, we expect roughly 140,000 visitors coming from China. Japan is about twice the size of India in terms of numbers, so we expect about 100,000 visitors to have come from there in 2009. But whereas China is a growing market (it grew by about 11 percent), Japan is a declining market at this moment. What is the extent of NBTC’s operations in India? Are there any plans for expansion in the near future? We have chosen to start with a representation in India, by a company called Buzz Travel Marketing. Through them we are present in Delhi and Mumbai. It is not a very big operation, but together with the Dutch Embassy in Delhi and the Mumbai Consulate, we try to be as active as we can. As the numbers are growing, our budget allocations for India are also gradually growing.
As for the future, we are quite satisfied with the way Buzz Travel Marketing is handling our operations and it remains the most cost-efficient way to be present in India. But I never say never! So maybe some time in the future we could be present here directly if it is necessary or more efficient for us to do that. Is that the usual way in which you enter a country? It is. In fact, we recently launched our operations in Russia through a representative agency. If at a later stage the numbers grow to such a level that it warrants us setting up directly, we will do that. Of course, since we are not a governmental organisation we feel it’s important to achieve as much as we can in the most cost- and marketing-effective manner. What is the strategy that the NBTC is adopting to realize its target of 170,000 visitors from India by 2020? This target will be reached with the same effort over the years. We still expect to reach the target, but in a different manner than anticipated, since it had been set before anyone knew about the economic downturn. The growth won’t have as much of an upward curve as we expected. It will be a little flatter in the coming few years and then pick up pace.
What we are now doing, as we have with Russia as well, is to set up alliances for developing markets to help us with achieving our targets sooner. We normally ask our partners to invest with us in the country. There are a lot of small and medium enterprises in this sector in Holland, who look for quicker return on their investments and so it is difficult to find companies wanting to invest in India, given that it’s a market for the future and not so much the present. In China too we faced that. So we are now looking at bigger players who can commit for the long term. For Russia, for instance, we have been able to do that with our partners KLM and the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. So along with us they are, in a sense, laying the foundation for our operations. Through the alliance we get a base in the country. We have been trying to do the same for India but haven’t managed to so far. I hope India will be the next one for this.
What we are doing in India is to tie up with the Dutch Embassy in Delhi and the Consulate General in Mumbai, because we want to do a lot more Holland branding. And this is something even the Ministry of Economic Affairs wants us to do. What is the tourism and business travel split in India for the Netherlands? At the moment it is 47 percent business travel, 42 percent leisure travel and 1 percent VFR (visiting friends and relative). While all travel is welcome, it is the duration of stay that we are concerned with. We would want them to come here for longer stays. A lot of times business travels extend their stay to see the country after their business is done. Right now the average is slightly over two nights’ stay and we would like to take it three, four or even more nights. Are there specific states within India that you are concentrating your marketing efforts on? Since we don’t do direct consumer marketing in India and target our efforts on press/PR and travel agencies, we end up concentrating on Delhi and Mumbai. What are the main Dutch attractions you are highlighting in India? For first-time travelers—and most of those coming to Holland from India are that—the Dutch icons are the main attractions. The windmills, the tulips, the 16th and 17th century art, and so on are high on their list and we will continue to focus on highlighting these. However, we also try to showcase other things. A lot of people coming from India still don’t know what to expect in Holland. We want to make sure that we present a picture of Holland in its entirety, as a country that has something for everybody. The other agencies we work with also help in this. For instance, the Embassy also focuses on other fields than tulips.
Having said that, we try to use the ‘essentials’ to open the doors to Holland for people—not just in India but also elsewhere. We use them as hooks to attract them to Holland so that they can come for them but end up getting a fuller picture of Holland when they are here. There has been an India festival in Amsterdam. Can we expect a Holland Festival in India anytime soon? We were actually planning one for the end of last year, but of course the downturn happened and we couldn’t go through with it. But it is still on our agenda and though I can’t tell you where and when, we would definitely want to do it. During the upcoming World Cup Hockey too there would be a lot of activities highlighting Holland in India. With the spotlight on the Dutch hockey team, we would like to take the opportunity, especially in the media, to do Holland promotion as well. How has the India experience been for you personally? Is there any interesting incident you would like to share? The two times I have been to India, what has made it special is the food I have had. I am a foodie and was privileged to have some really good food in India—real local food in a roadside restaurant instead of a luxury hotel. In Mumbai, for instance, I went to a small place equivalent to an American diner, with shiny tables and cubicles where you sit down and the most amazing curries pass by. Another memory is of a sweet shop in Delhi selling traditional Indian sweets. I remember I came back with two kilos of all kinds of sweets and was eating them for weeks afterwards.
Apart from food there is one more thing I remember. As every other foreigner, I made a trip to the Taj Mahal. While traveling to Agra by road, it felt like I was watching my private movie, with people and life passing by. I have lived in Tokyo, so I am used to seeing a lot of people around me, but India was twice or thrice as much as I was used to. And you see these people moving—going somewhere, doing something. It makes you think that it is only natural that India is growing at the pace it is, because all these people are physically active, and therefore economically active. Realizing that and seeing all that activity was very interesting for me.