More Dutch travelers flying from Belgium, Germany for cheaper tickets

Netherlands residents going on holiday are increasingly flying from airports in Belgium or Germany to get cheaper tickets. The price difference with Schiphol Airport is increasing and a family can now save up to 600 euros by driving to an airport across the border, AD reported after speaking with the travel organizations Sunweb and TUI.

Sunweb told the newspaper that 20 percent more Dutch people are opting for a cheaper airport abroad when booking their May and summer holidays, compared to last year. Before the pandemic, 6 percent of Dutch Sunweb flights departed from foreign airports. Last year, that was around a quarter.

TUI said that over a third of Dutch travelers are considering flying from a foreign airport, mainly because of the “significantly lower prices.”

The Dutch flight tax and high parking costs make Schiphol relatively expensive. Anyone flying from a Dutch airport now pays almost 30 euros in flight tax - twice as much as in Germany and 15 times more than in Belgium. Schiphol also increased its port charges for airlines by 41 percent this year. Airlines partly passed that cost increase on to customers with pricier tickets.

“In Belgium, you can park for 1 euro per day. Add the flight tax and the additional costs and you can save 50 to 150 euros per person if you fly from a foreign airport,” Tim van den Bergh, the commercial director of Sunweb Group, told AD. “People are then prepared to drive further by car because the lower costs can make all the difference in being able to go to Greece or Spain for ten days within a certain budget.”

Van den Bergh said that Sunweb has to keep holidays affordable and that now means offering alternatives to Schiphol.

The foreign airports are benefiting from the influx of Dutch passengers. For example, Weeze Airport in Germany, which is a 90-minute drive from Utrecht, counted 790,000 Dutch passengers last year. That is about 40 percent of its total passengers, according to AD. The airport now offers 40 more destinations and is building an extra parking lot to accommodate the growth. The airports in Antwerp, Brussels, Düsseldorf, and Cologne are also expanding their destinations.