The Netherlands Travel Guide is an entirely reader funded publication that puts the visitor first. We’re fiercely critical and dedicated to writing about when to go, what to do and why you’ll love it. We often write about locations and events that no one else is writing about on their websites and in their travel guides.
What makes us different?
Why trust us when you have dozens of other options to get your information? The Dutch tourism landscape is full of amazing choices:
- You’ve can buy travel guides, online and in book stores, published by commercial authors & publishing companies on a mission to generate residual income from one-time efforts.
- You’ve got tourism offices in larger cities, where you can pickup brochures (usually free-of-charge), and other (paid) material, and then go back to your hotel and figure out what you can do in the region.
- You've got various websites, some operated by tourism offices with a calendar of events. There are also websites operated by venues, where volunteers with limited resources and IT skills passionately put together some information that is only available in Dutch.
- You've got tour guides that love to take you places that they put on their list of places to visit. They lead, you follow. Some of these places even pay the tour guide a commission of the entry fees / consumptions. Also, you will need to stand near to the tour guide to catch most of the details that (s)he is sharing, which can be challenging with larger groups.
But if you’re looking for an alternative, that’s what we’re here for. The Netherlands Travel Guide was founded as an antidote to commercial publications and local initiatives that are often only available in the Dutch language. We put you in control of what you want to see and do, and point out how to get the best out of your visit as a non-Dutch speaker. We’re here to tell you about the popular and less known places to visit, and we’re here to do it with an unwavering commitment to making your stay in the Netherlands a great experience.
Why?
Because we're proud of our heritage and we know that many venues can only survive if there they have visitors. Not only financially, but also to motivate all of the volunteers and staff that work hard to keep these venues operational. In a sense, we are contributing to preserving our heritage by helping you enjoy many of the hidden gems that our country offers.
Who owns and funds us?
In short, you do. We’ve got no investors, no institutional backers and no advertisers funding our work. The Netherlands Travel Guide is a 100% reader funded initiative. Readers support us by making voluntary donations.
We are a non-profit in spirit, but not a registered non-profit. Why? It costs quite a bit of money to be an officially registrated non-profit (and continuously meet all of the (reporting) requirements). To be honest, the amount of donations we receive only covers a fraction of these costs.
All donations are used to cover our operational cost, e.g., internet domain name registration, and travel cost so we can write about locations based on our own observations / experiences.
It also means we have an unparalleled level of editorial independence. There’s nobody that gets to dictate what we do or don’t publish. And since we don’t run ads, our coverage isn’t influenced by what corporate advertisers might like or dislike. We answer to no one except our readers.
It’s risky, because we’re entirely reliant on readers to fund our work. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. If you want to be part of our little experiment to build a better travel guide for the Netherlands, then we welcome you to make a donation today and help us publish more articles, and recommendations!