Moving ahead with the motto ‘Supporting the known, introducing the new’, Netherlands presents a different avatar to tourist groups and business travellers and showcases the country as an attractive destination for holidays, business meetings, conventions and weddings. Since most visitors would visit Amsterdam, therefore this year Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC) plans to promote Netherlands beyond Amsterdam.
Addressing a press meet at the Embassy of Netherlands, Alphonsus Stoelinga, ambassador of Netherlands spoke about the growth factors with respect to aviation. He said, “We are registering growth in every aspect. Mentioning specially about aviation, it is clearly evident that the main growth was witnessed after 2016 when we had a joint venture with the Jet Airways. Also, visa applications increased by three times from 32,000 applications per year to 100,000 applications per year.”
2017 ended with 30 per cent growth rate as compared to 2016, so 2018 is also predicted to conclude with double digit growth. There was also a hike in direct air capacity.
Elaborating about upcoming marketing activities, Stoelinga said, “NBTC along with Jet Airways, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Schiphol will run joint co-operation partnerships with travel agents and OTAs.”
“Also, we will be running an extensive destination training sales blitz for better penetration and improving destination knowledge in tier two markets. Under this programme, our sales team will visit the key agents in their cities and provide customised training. This would include leisure agents, luxury agents, and online travel agents in cities like Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Hyderabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Kolkata, Ludhiana, Udaipur and Bangalore,” he mentioned.
Speaking exclusively to Express TravelWorld about new initiatives to further boost the diplomatic ties between India and Netherlands, Stoelinga said, “Because of the visit of prime minister Narendra Modi in 2017, that zone of comfort between the two countries has strengthened considerably. Our prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende visited India in the year 2007, followed by prime minister Mark Rutte again visiting India in 2015 and he will be visiting India this year by the end of this month. We are the second largest exporter of agricultural produce in flowers. We have a huge agro economy driven by latest technologies. We have introduced apple trees here that yield five times more produce as compared to normal apple tree. We have set up seed companies providing hybrid seeds for tomatoes, cucumber, eggplants and onions.”
“During the visit of our prime minister, we want to support Haryana as the state has water related problems, rice related issues, grains and Horticulture. Keeping these in mind, University of Horticulture will be established in Haryana to help them with agriculture and horticulture related issues. We also intend to set up supply chains and super markets like we did in Karnataka, for facilitating easy distribution and delivering quality produce. We are also working with companies like Tech Mahindra in the field of agriculture to boost existing agricultural produce,” he stated.
