Skift Take
Holland City is one of the most clever concepts we've seen from a DMO. Tourists won't visit the other Dutch cities just because Visit Holland says they're close by but it will do a lot to build a stronger, more unified brand.
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Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with CEOs of destination marketing organizations where we discuss the future of their organizations and the evolving strategies for attracting visitors. You can read all the other interviews here.
This continues our series of CEO interviews that began with online travel CEOs in Future of Travel Booking (now an e-book), and continued with hotel CEOs in the Future of the Guest Experience series (which is also an e-book).
Between Holland's iconic tulips, its well-known canals, and bicycle culture, this small European country certainly isn't unknown to international travelers.
But Visit Holland must continuously reinvent incentives in order to move tourists beyond Amsterdam's charm and out into the countryside and other cities. In 2014, the country welcomed 14 million international visitors who spent 10.2 billion euro ($11.5 billion), about 40% of which was spent in Amsterdam alone, the Netherlands' largest city and arguably biggest attraction.
Skift recently talked to Visit Holland's CEO Jos Vranken about the organization's new effort to market Holland as one gigantic city made up of distinctive neighborhoods rather than a country, how he and his team deal with funding cuts, and his thoughts on a "tourist cap" for Amsterdam. An edited version of the interview follows:
Skift: Of the 14 million international travelers who visited Holland last year, less than half (5 million) went to Amsterdam. This seems a little surprising since I would think Amsterdam is your main draw and more would visit that city. Why is this the case?
Jos Vranken: The reason why so many don’t go to Amsterdam is because for our two largest markets, Belgium and Germany, Amsterdam is not the primary reason they visit. Germans love our beaches, Belgians love our coast as well and do our bicycling through back roads. Germans are our largest source market of all international visitors (26%), followed by the U.K., then Belgium and then the U.S. China is growing too (20%) and we've seen double digit growth with that market during the past few years. The North American market grew about 6 to 7% year-over-year after a small dip and we anticipate hitting 1 million visitors this year from North America.
Because of the share volume of Germans they top everyone else for total spending but they still spend less per person, so the U.S. and Canadians are worth more for
