Tourism increasingly important for Dutch economy: Stats Office

Tourism is playing a bigger and bigger part in the Dutch economy, Statistics Netherlands reported on Monday. Since 2010, tourist spending in the Netherlands increased by 27 percent. Last year the tourism sector generated an added value of 24.8 billion euros to the Dutch economy, over 43 percent more than the 17.3 billion euros generated in 2010.

In 2016 tourists from the Netherlands and abroad spent about 4 percent more in the Netherlands than the year before. The value of all expenditure in the sector grew to 75.7 billon euros. An important part of this growth can be attributed to foreign tourists. Last year tourists from abroad spent 21 billion euros in the country, 1.3 billion euros more than in 2015. That is an increase of nearly 7 percent.

There is also an increasing number of tourists who book their holiday through a Dutch company, even though a large part of these tourists don't actually spend their holiday in the Netherlands. The Dutch companies still earn money from these bookings.

Over the past years the tourism sector grew more strongly than the economy. As a result, the tourism sector's share of the total added value increased from 3.0 percent in 2010 to 3.9 percent last year.

The number of jobs in the tourism sector increased by over 13 thousand to 641 thousand jobs last year, an increase of 2.1 percent. The total number of jobs in the entire Dutch economy increased by 1.0 percent last year. In 2016 the tourism sector accounted for 6.4 percent of the total number of jobs in the Netherlands.