The Dutch tourist board has invited seven so-called influencers to the Netherlands in an effort to help spread tourist away from the main attractions.

Together, the seven bloggers have 500,000 followers on social media and the NBTC hopes that by showing them other parts of the country, they will get the word out that there is more to the Netherlands than Amsterdam.

The organised tour took the group – mainly young American women – to Nijmegen, Arnhem and Apeldoorn – in a tour closely linked to the Liberation of the country from the Nazis 75 years ago this spring.

‘We are looking for quality tourists,’ NBTC spokeswoman Elsje van Vuuren told NOS, who followed the tour.

The tourist board said last spring it is to stop actively promoting the Netherlands as a holiday destination because its main attractions – the canals, tulips and windmills – are becoming overcrowded.

In 2018, it developed the HollandCity to try to spread tourists outside the main hotspots of Amsterdam, fishing villages and the bulb fields. HollandCity strategy  involves promoting the Netherlands as a single metropolis with lots of districts, such as Lake District Friesland and Design District Eindhoven.

The influencer promo trip is a part of that strategy to show other parts of the country and, in the words of junior economic minister Mona Keijzer, should ‘encourage visitors to go to less well-known parts of the country’ in order to spread the burden and create jobs in the provinces.

Last year, some 20 million foreign tourists came to the Netherlands and Amsterdam was by far the most popular attraction.