Amsterdam continues to grow in 2019

Development overnight stays Amsterdam:

The number of overnight  stays in Amsterdam increased significantly in 2019 compared to 2018 (10.2%). As a result, Amsterdam recorded a higher percentage increase in overnight stays overall than the average of European cities (4.0%). The number of tourist nights in particular is increasing rapidly (12.7%), where business overnight stays have risen by 5.2% compared to the previous year.

This large increase in hotel stays is mainly due to foreign nights (15.5 million nights in 2019, an increase of 11.9% compared to 2018). The number of overnight stays of Dutch visitors rose by only 2.1%.
When focusing on hotel stays from the so-called core markets, there is a lot of growth in the number of stays from the United Kingdom (+ 16.5%), Germany(+ 11.2%) and the United States (+10.6) %).

In addition to these core markets, the number of hotel stays in Amsterdam among the opportunity markets is also increasing. Russia and India in particular show a large increase (24.5% and 21.3% respectively).

Developments in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area:

Not only Amsterdam, but the entire Metropolitan Area is growing. The total number of hotel stays in the Metropolitan Area increased by 14.7% (excluding Amsterdam) in 2019, a larger increase than the city of Amsterdam itself. This is not only caused by Dutch overnight stays, which rise more sharply in the region than in the city (respectively 14.6% vs. 2.1%), but also by all other core markets (except Belgium and the United Kingdom) where the number of overnight stays in the region is growing faster in percentage terms than in the city.
This seems to confirm the picture emerging from the ECM Visitor Report where visitors from the city move more to the surrounding regions to spend the night.

Hotel nights in the entire metropolitan Area, including Amsterdam, have increased by 11.6% in 2019. The number of nights spent by international visitors increased more than the number of Domestic nights (12.5% ??vs. 8.8%, respectively). Especially in the month of April there is a strong increase compared to 2018 in both domestic and foreign overnight stays in the Metropolitan Area (incl. Amsterdam) (20.8% and 19.9%, respectively). This is caused by the Easter effect. In 2019, Easter fell during the May holiday so people were free for a longer period of time.

Passengers

n 2019, more than 15 million foreign passengers arrived at Schiphol. That is a small increase of 1.8% compared to 2018. April to October were the busiest months, with an average of nearly 1.4 million passengers per month. Nevertheless, May and August show a slight decrease in foreign passengers compared to 2018.
The number of passengers on board ships at the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam shows a significant decrease (-31% compared to 2018), with a total of less than 300,000 passengers in 2019. This decrease may be related to the newly introduced tourist tax for cruise ships in 2019. To illustrate, the highest peak passenger traffic was reached in August with 65,500 passengers in August, while in 2018 this peak came a month earlier with 97,000 passengers.

Activities: museum & attraction visits

In general, both museum and attraction visits have increased in 2019 (5.3% and 6.5% respectively compared to 2018). Although June and August attracted fewer museum visitors compared to 2018, there are just 2 peaks in July and November. We also see the same trend with attraction visits. Where there are fewer visitors to attractions in June compared to 2018 (-1.4%), July has a huge peak (17.7%).