Americans and Japanese avoid the Netherlands

7 January 2008

LEIDSCHENDAM – American, Canadian and Japanese holidaymakers are avoiding the Netherlands because of the expensive euro. This emerged from the annual figures for 2007 from the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions.

The number of visitors from the US fell by 3 percent last year. That was a smaller decline than in the number of visitors from Canada and Japan, which came to 11 and 15 percent, respectively.

The decline in the number of visitors from North America and Japan was largely compensated by the increase of the number of visitors from countries like Belgium (up 11 percent), Spain (10 percent), Finland (10 percent), Russia (14 percent), China (14 percent) and India (13 percent).

On balance the number of foreign tourists to the Netherlands rose by 3 percent in 2007. In total more than 11 million foreigners spent their holidays here, compared to 10.7 million in 2006.

Subject: Dutch news