The Netherlands are an important platform for the transit of goods and manufactured products, which is highlighted by its strong trade openness ratio (77%). Exports have been rising since 2012 and are on a strong momentum: after growing by 5.3% in 2015, they rose by 3.4% in 2016. In the future, the global slowdown in the shipping sector might however curtail this solid growth.

The number of foreign arrivals in the Netherlands marked a pause in 2015, after posting a continuous rise over the 2009-2014 period. Foreign arrivals reached 13.9 million.

Domestic guests generate less than half of overnights spent in Dutch hotels. Foreign customers mainly come from the neighbouring European countries. Whereas arrivals from Great Britain and the USA barely recovered their pre-crisis level, other source markets delivered very strong growth between 2007 and 2015: Germany is up 46%, Belgium +70%, France +38%, and China x2.5, reaching 1.2% of total overnights spent in the country as of 2015. As a consequence, the share of international clientele is growing steadily; it reached 52.2% in 2015.

As of January 1, 2017, the Netherlands host 100,077 hotel rooms, up 0.2 % from 2016.

On January 1, 2017, the Dutch chain supply has 64,849 rooms.

These different trends point to an ongoing rebalancing of the Dutch hotel supply towards segments that were previously underrepresented, notably the budget and upscale categories. Supply is also increasingly concentrated in major cities.