Holiday Survey

What does the survey entail?

Purpose

To gather information on the various aspects of the holiday behaviour of residents of the Netherlands, such as the destinations where they spend their holiday, how long they stay for, the travel party, the booking process, types of holiday, accommodation, transport, and spending.

Target population

Residents of the Netherlands aged 15 years or older living in private households, excluding residents of institutions, nursing homes and residential care facilities.

Statistical unit

Persons, holidays.

Start of survey

Since 1969, Statistics Netherlands has been collecting annual data on the holidays taken by residents of the Netherlands, initially through surveys that also covered other topics. Since 1992, holidays have been the subject of a dedicated survey, the Continuous Holiday Survey. The data for this survey was first collected by an external research agency specialising in tourism, NBTC-NIPO. This was a partnership between NBTC Holland Marketing and TNS-NIPO (now Kantar). In 2021, NBTC-NIPO was wound up, and since then Statistics Netherlands has been conducting the Holiday survey.

Frequency

The Holidays Survey is conducted annually.

Publication strategy

Provisional figures are published first. These figures become definitive once the provisional figures for the following year are published.

How is the survey conducted?

Type of survey

A sample survey of persons, selected from the Personal Records Database (BRP). This sample survey is conducted each year, with 1 January of the year reported as the reference date.

Data collection method

The Holidays Survey is a panel survey. This means that individuals in the sample survey can take part over a longer period. For the Holidays Survey, this is a maximum of four years. Individuals who take part in the survey are included in the panel. At the end of each quarter, they are contacted and asked to complete a questionnaire about their holidays and day trips in the preceding quarter. They are asked to complete a questionnaire four times a year. The figures from the Holidays Survey are based on data provided by individuals who have completed all four questionnaires over the course of a year.

Participants leave the panel every year. Some panel members decide that they no longer wish to participate in the survey (non-response), while others have been panel members for four years. Because of this, new panel members have to be asked to participate. This is done annually, by means of a supplementary sample.

People included in this sample survey will be contacted by letter when they are first asked to participate in survey 1. Individuals who have already participated in the panel are contacted by email, unless they have not provided an email address in the questionnaire.

The panel members are contacted in January, April, July and October and asked to provide information about their holiday(s) during the preceding three months. If respondents indicate that they have not been on holiday at all over the whole year, they are asked to state the reason for this. The questionnaire can be completed online by using a PC or laptop, smartphone or tablet. If no response is received, a reminder is sent after three weeks. Up to three reminders are sent.

Respondents

Persons aged 15 years or older living in private households. Until 2020, the survey was conducted among people of all ages. For participants aged under 12, the questionnaire was completed by a parent or carer, and participants aged 12 to 17 were asked to complete the questionnaire, if necessary, together with a parent or carer.

Scope and delimitation

Since 2021, the Holidays Survey has been based on calendar years, and all holidays ending in the calendar year are counted. Until 2020, the Holidays Survey was based on holiday years, which ran from 1 October to 30 September, and the start date of the holiday was used to determine which holiday year it concerned. The current definition corresponds with that of the European statistical office, Eurostat.

Scope of sample survey

The net sample survey size for the Holidays Survey was 9,750 in 2021 and 2022; from 2023 onwards, this was 6,500 individuals.

Checking and correction methods

The quality of the survey data is monitored in various ways:

1. The questionnaire includes options to ensure that, as far as possible, respondents only need to answer the questions that apply to them.
2. The questionnaire contains validation checks, which are triggered when it appears that a particular answer or combination of answers is illogical or implausible.
3. Many questions in the questionnaire cannot be skipped; a response is required.
4. Criteria have been drawn up for excluding a particular respondent’s answers. This is done if the answers describe a situation that is both exceptional and substantially influences the results of the survey (i.e. outliers).
5. Unlikely and impossible combinations of answers are corrected where possible (e.g. if someone states that they cycled to Australia or travelled by aeroplane free of charge) or, where this is not possible, imputed. The same applies to missing values.

Weighting

A weighting is applied to the survey to adjust for differences between the composition of the net sample and the target population (i.e. residents of the Netherlands living in private households). This relates to the composition in terms of background characteristics, such as age and gender. If, for example, the ratio of men to women differs between the sample and the target population, this is adjusted.

This way, the weighting ensures that the survey figures reflect the holiday behaviour of residents of the Netherlands as accurately as possible and are representative. Weighting is applied according to the socio-demographic characteristics of age, gender, migration background, income, degree of urbanisation and position within the household.

Quality of the results

Accuracy

A sample survey like the Holidays Survey does not provide an exact result, but the best possible approximation of it. This is because the sample includes only a portion of the population, which can never perfectly reflect the population as a whole.

Weighting can compensate for this in part, but never entirely, since not everyone in the Netherlands participates in the survey. This means that the figures are never one hundred percent reliable and always remain an estimate. As a measure of the reliability of the figures, each figure from the survey is therefore given a lower and an upper limit. The range between these limits is the confidence interval. It can be stated with 95 percent certainty that a figure falls within this interval, i.e. between the lower and upper limits of a figure. In general terms, a figure is considered more reliable when the difference between the lower and upper limits is small.

In addition, it has been decided not to publish any figures of this survey if they are based on fewer than 50 respondents. The margin would then be too wide to allow for the figure to be interpreted accurately. In the cells where this applies, a full stop “.” is shown instead.

Comparability over the years

Due to changes made to the methodology used for this survey, the figures from different years are not necessarily comparable. Particular caution should be exercised when comparing figures for the periods 1969 to 2001, 2002 to 2016, 2017 to 2020 and from 2021 onwards. Substantial changes to the survey were made between those periods.

In 2025 the questions on holiday spending were improved. Since then, respondents have been asked to specify the number of people included in the holiday spending, and the amounts reported are divided by this number. In previous years, the amounts reported were divided by the total number of people in the travel party. In many cases, this change has led to higher estimates of spending, but the new approach provides a more accurate estimate of actual holiday spending. The figures for holiday spending from 2025 onwards are not directly comparable with those in previous editions, because of this change.

Quality strategy

All data is checked for internal consistency, completeness, plausibility and comparability with previous years. At the same time, continuous efforts are made to improve the process of data collection and processing.