Hotel stays in Amsterdam by business travelers are down 38% compared to pre-pandemic 2019, although hotels have had enough tourism business to take up the slack.
Research by Dutch bank ABN Amro compares 5.82 million business hotel guests in 2019 with 3.59 million last year. As a proportion of hotel stays, the drop is from 32% to about 18%.
While the hotels have stayed full, other business sectors are less lucky, because business travelers tend to spend, on average, twice as much as leisure travelers, and fill parts of the week when tourists are fewer.
Part of the drop in business travelers may be due to a general drop in business travel as many companies have continued to organize meetings by Zoom and similar platforms rather than returning to face-to-face meetings; another part is a growth in travelers, both business and leisure, staying outside the city.
