Amsterdam Business Travel Statistics 2026

Amsterdam runs on business visitors, yet almost every published statistic about the city describes leisure tourism. This page collects the figures that actually matter if you are travelling here for work, or budgeting for someone who is. Every number below carries its source and the year it refers to, because a 2026 page quoting 2022 data is worse than no page at all.

Last verified: 8 July 2026. Figures are labelled with the period they describe, not the date we published them.

Our own figure: what tax does to an Amsterdam hotel bill in 2026

This is the calculation we could not find published anywhere in plain English, so we did it ourselves. Two separate taxes stack on an Amsterdam hotel night, and one of them changed on 1 January 2026.

• VAT on accommodation rose from 9 percent to 21 percent on 1 January 2026. Source: Belastingdienst, effective 1 January 2026.
• Amsterdam charges 12.5 percent tourist tax on the room rate, unchanged for 2026. Source: Koninklijke Horeca Nederland, 2026 rate.

Applied to a room a hotel prices at 200 euros net, the arithmetic runs like this:

• A room the hotel prices at 200 euros net costs a business traveller about 272 euros in 2026, of which roughly 72 euros is tax. Our calculation, July 2026.
• The same room costs about 27 euros more per night than in 2025, an increase of around 11 percent, even if the hotel never changed its own rate. Our calculation, July 2026.
• Over a three night trip that is roughly 81 euros of extra cost per traveller, which is the figure worth taking to whoever signs off your travel budget. Our calculation, July 2026.

Method: tourist tax is calculated on the net room rate, and Dutch VAT is charged over the room rate including the tourist tax passed on to the guest, which is standard practice. Hotels that structure their billing differently will land a euro or two either side. Camping accommodation stayed at 9 percent VAT and is excluded.

Business events and conferences

• Amsterdam hosted 94 international association meetings in 2024, ranking 17th worldwide and 13th in Europe. Source: Amsterdam & Partners citing ICCA, 2024.
• Those meetings drew close to 58,000 delegates and generated an estimated 230 million euros, placing Amsterdam 7th worldwide for economic returns from association meetings. Source: Amsterdam & Partners citing ICCA, 2024.
• Amsterdam’s international meetings count has risen steadily, from 73 in 2022 to 84 in 2023 and 94 in 2024. Source: Amsterdam & Partners citing ICCA, 2022 to 2024.
• The Netherlands hosted 295 qualifying international association meetings in 2024, 8th in the world. Source: Amsterdam & Partners citing ICCA, 2024.
• RAI Amsterdam hosted more than 280 events in 2025 and welcomed close to 1.5 million visitors. Source: RAI Amsterdam, 2025.
• RAI Amsterdam reported 172 million euros of revenue in 2025, up 14 percent on 2023, the comparable odd year in its biennial event cycle. Source: RAI Amsterdam, 2025.

Schiphol Airport

• Schiphol handled 68.8 million passengers in 2025, up 2.9 percent on 2024. Source: Royal Schiphol Group, 2025.
• Schiphol offered direct connections to 301 destinations in 2025, of which 125 were intercontinental. Source: Royal Schiphol Group, 2025.
• Transfer passengers made up 25.2 million of those travellers, or 36.6 percent, meaning 43.6 million people flew directly to or from Amsterdam. Source: Royal Schiphol Group, 2025.
• Schiphol recorded 477,552 air transport movements in 2025, about 1 percent more than in 2024. Source: Royal Schiphol Group, 2025.
• Of the 2025 total, 48.9 million passengers flew to or from European destinations and 19.9 million intercontinental. Source: Royal Schiphol Group, 2025.

For what those connections mean in practice, including journey times to the Zuidas, see our guide to getting from Schiphol into Amsterdam.

Hotels and accommodation supply

• Amsterdam had 544 hotels offering roughly 41,000 rooms and 92,000 beds at the start of 2025. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Onderzoek en Statistiek, early 2025.
• About 95 percent of visitors who stay overnight in Amsterdam stay in a hotel. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Onderzoek en Statistiek, 2024.
• Amsterdam hotels reached 85.0 percent occupancy in April 2025, at an average daily rate of 210.87 euros and RevPAR of 179.32 euros. Source: CoStar and STR, April 2025, a single strong month rather than a full year average.
• Amsterdam welcomed 9.5 million accommodation guests in 2025, the largest rise in overnight stays of any major Dutch city at 2 percent. Source: CBS, 2025, provisional.
• Amsterdam recorded almost 23 million overnight stays in 2024, from just under 10 million staying visitors, and more than 80 percent of those overnight stays were by international visitors. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Onderzoek en Statistiek, 2024.

Hotel supply in Amsterdam is constrained by city policy, which is why rooms disappear and rates climb around the large RAI weeks. Where to base yourself, and the trade off between the Zuidas and the centre, is covered in our guide to the best area to stay for a business trip.

The Zuidas business district

• The Zuidas is home to 2,835 companies. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Zuidas, 2023, the most recent published count.
• More than 50,000 people work in the Zuidas, alongside about 5,300 residents and roughly 32,000 students. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Zuidas, 2024.
• At full build out the Zuidas will comprise 2,040,000 square metres of floor space, including 870,000 square metres of offices. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Zuidas, full build out, with more than a million square metres still to be developed towards 2030.
• The district covers roughly 245 hectares and runs 3.5 kilometres from east to west. Source: Gemeente Amsterdam, Zuidas, 2024.
• The wider Amsterdam Area hosts more than 3,500 international companies and close to 2,000 startups and scaleups. Source: Amsterdam & Partners, current as published, no year stated.

Doing business here: language and payments

• The Netherlands ranks first in the world for English proficiency, out of 123 countries and regions, with an EF EPI score of 624. Source: EF Education First, 2025 edition, based on 2.2 million test takers.
• Cash accounted for just 17 percent of point of sale payments in the Netherlands in 2025, against 83 percent by card. Source: De Nederlandsche Bank and Betaalvereniging Nederland, 2025.
• 95 percent of Dutch debit card payments were contactless in 2025, across 5.83 billion transactions worth 150 billion euros. Source: Betaalvereniging Nederland, 2025.
• Cash was still accepted at 96 percent of Dutch point of sale locations in 2025, so carrying a little is a reasonable backup even though you will rarely need it. Source: Betaalvereniging Nederland, 2025.

What this means for tipping, etiquette and paying your way is set out in business essentials and our guide to tipping in Amsterdam.

What we could not verify

Publishing what is missing is part of being useful. We looked for the following and did not find a source solid enough to quote:

• The business share of Amsterdam visitors. Figures between 16 and 32 percent circulate, but we could not confirm any of them against the city’s own published data, so we have left them out.
• The business versus leisure split of Schiphol passengers. A 27 percent business figure circulates widely without a traceable source.
• Full year 2025 Amsterdam hotel ADR, occupancy and RevPAR. Only monthly snapshots are published free of charge, which is why the April 2025 month appears above rather than an annual average.
• Meeting room and day delegate rates in Amsterdam. No public benchmark exists at all. This is the largest genuine data gap for business travellers to the city.

Using these figures

You are welcome to quote any statistic on this page. Please cite the original source named next to each figure, and link here if our own calculation on hotel taxation is the number you are using. If you spot an error or have a better source, tell us and we will correct it.

This page is rebuilt every January: figures are refreshed, the year in the title changes, and superseded numbers move into a history section rather than disappearing.