Category: Netherlands

Suite Dreams in a church

Droomkerk

Just on the threshold of 2007 I found Droomkerk (Dutch for “Dream Church”) in Barsingerhorn, a little village just east of Schagen which is located approximately 40 km north of Amsterdam.
In a recently renovated church there are two luxury suites with capacity for 4 persons to stay (with a minimum of two nights stay). It looks promising, although their site is as yet only in Dutch. It is also fit for a small wedding ceremony and as a honeymoon suite.

Update December 2007:

I have deleted the link as it doesn’t work anymore. It is even obscure whether the project is still alive!

The Trippist Blog

Trippist

As a native Dutchman I am very proud of my small, but very peculiar country. Therefor one of my aims with this Blog is to make sure a lot of information about The Netherlands is available in the English language. So I am glad to present to you the The Trippist Blog [discontinued in the meantime]

Trippist was a sort of community Blog written by:

  • Svintha
    Blond, 100% Dutch girl born in the northern part of Holland, speaking with a heavy “farmers” accent (when she feels like it). She spends her weekdays at the office of the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions in New York as Project Manager. Svintha traveled extensively, lived and worked on several continents
  • Dragqueen
    Don’t know “her” name, but she must’ve been something along the lines of Cotton Candy, has nothing to do with Trippist, but Sebastian thought she was hot!
  • Arthur
    The youngest of the crew, also working for the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, has just left student life behind a mere 3 months ago! Lived in Amsterdam before coming to New York and is now bumming around in Midtown somewhere.
  • Sebastian
    Not blond (nor a girl) and far from being “typical Dutch,” Sebastian is the Internet Manager at the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions in New York. Aside from his duties at work, he writes “interesting” postings for MarketingFacts.nl.
  • Neil Carlson
    Originally from Toronto, Neil Carlson is living out his dream in Amsterdam and in Vancouver, Canada. He last studied at the University of British Columbia. His passion for travel started early with long stints in Yemen, Israel and Indonesia as a child, and to date he’s visited more than 40 countries-oddly none of them in Central or South America. When he’s not chained to his computer you can find him in the city attending cultural events, exploring the culinary scene, and browsing galleries and bookstores, or in the outdoors where he camps, hikes, kayaks, sails and snowboards. His diverse interests include architecture and design, cooking and dining, fine arts, the social histories of Europe and Africa, environmentally sustainable tourism, listening to jazz, and exploring Southern Africa.
  • Janelle Ward
    An enthusiastic Amsterdam dweller from Minnesota obsessed with learning and observation. Yet…my Dutch is still sadly mediocre (on a good day). Biker extraordinaire, Caprese lover, pigeon hater, canal gazer. Oh yeah: I’m a graduate student, which is the reason I’m officially here
  • Bess Van Asselt
    I am an international student from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana studying at the University of Amsterdam for Fall semester 2006
  • Michael Glennon
    I like music with squeaks and snarls; sometimes I imagine 24 is the biggest number. Student of ‘social theory and public affairs’, which right now means reading all the time and preparing to talk about reading. Sociology = I’ll be watching you…
  • Duck & Birdie
    From the boardroom to the darkroom, from the jungle to the supermarket aisle, Duck & Birdie are masters at combining the witty and intelligent with the silly and crude. Started as a student prank, they now enjoy great popularity in the Netherlands. Both endearing and repulsive, Duck & Birdie are remarkably versatile in their consistent effort to redefine the boundaries of good taste.
    In the Netherlands, their home country, Duck & Birdie are known as Fokke & Sukke. From the moment Fokke & Sukke were born, in 1993, their names have caused a multitude of giggles among our English-speaking friends, most of whom won’t believe that the resemblance with certain English verbs is simply a coincidence. Duck & Birdie began their rise to stardom in 1994 in a renowned Amsterdam student magazine.
  • Bicyclemark
    Dispatches from a Portuguese-American, radical, activist-blogger, podjournalist, vlogger, and citizen reporter; living in Amsterdam.

By their youth, background and interests, it promises and is already a highly interesting Blog that started somewhere in summer 2006. Its main focus is of course Amsterdam, but it also hints and discusses the typical Dutch things and habits. Enjoy!

Added 22nd December: They even have their own DJ Lucky Charms Ipod mix! (three tracks for the moment)

Update

They belong to the catagory Dead Travel Blog Society as of January, 2012. I found their final post in the Wayback Machine by Bicyclemark:

We must go, but the Trippist Resource Lives On
January 2, 2012

Well there will be no parade or ceremony of any kind. No flashy banner across the top of your screen and no special offer in honor of our last posts here on Trippist. A place for stories, recommendations, and observations about this land that none of us were born in but we each know and love in a different way. For five great years we have been here with you sharing and musing about a wide range of things going on in a country with a range of tastes as diverse as anyone could imagine. Its easy to travel to the Netherlands, but its an exciting challenge to pick and choose out of everything that which inspires and moves you.

2012 has begun and so too have millions of travel plans that might possibly land someone back on this site, perusing a post about a café or festival that is just as good- if not better- as the day we recommended it. For that reason, this site will live on as a resource, and we’re happy to have been and continue to be of service.

I’d like to extend a very special thank you to my fellow trippists Janelle and Alison, and everyone who wrote for the blog over the years, it was a pleasure.

Best of luck in your travels and life adventures this year and beyond. Thanks for joining us here and until next we meet somewhere in the online world, as they say in the Netherlands, -tot ziens.

On a later date it seems it disappeared entirely.

Weekendhotel.nl and hoteliers.nl working together

The site Weekendhotel.nl was set up by Willem and Esme Vos: Willem has a background in travel and tourism and Esme in intellectual property law and Internet related matters.

We started Weekendhotel in April 2002 to help you find the best addresses for a weekend away. Like you, we became frustrated with typical booking sites that serve chain hotels desperate to dump their unsold inventory.

We were looking for something more personal and atmospheric, a site that would bring together the most charming hotels and B&B’s with character. Because we did not find such a site, we decided to create our own and weekendhotel.nl was born.

How they work is explained more in detail here.

In order to enhance the usability of the site Willem has built a simple inventory database for available rooms that each hotelier can keep up to date. Thus the user of the site can easily make a choice for a hotel to stay. The only problem is the maintenance of the data. The Hoteliers have to keep the inventory up to date almost daily or at least each time the inventory changes. This in itself is a nightmare for hoteliers of a small size hotel/B&B, especially when he has to allocate inventory over several sites where rooms can be booked on line…. Consequently the inventory of Weekendhotel is not always 100% up to date.

In 2005 a couple of graduates of a Dutch Hotel School have set up Hoteliers.nl (which is the same as Hoteliers.com) in cooperation with the Dutch Horeca Association to which association many Dutch Hotels belong, in order to create a possibility for hotels and B&B’s to be bookable on line. Both via the sites of Hotelier, but also via a link with Hotelier through their own site. The hotels pay a moderate monthly fee for the use of the site rather than the commissions they have to pay to the bigger portals. The site grows and works satisfactorily.

Weekendhotel.nl is more the content site and has details about approximately 1200 small Dutch and Belgian hotels and B&b’s and approximately 6000 unique visitors per day. Hotelier.nl is more the technically driven site that since inception has now approximately 600 participants including hotels belonging to chains or conglomerates.

Recently, the two have officially announced their cooperation whereby the site Weekendhotel.nl is linked with the inventory system of Hotelier.nl. If the hotelier wishes to have his property on both sites, he only has to maintain his inventory on the Hotelier.nl site.

I am glad with this new development to which, in the background, I could contribute a bit.

Food Blogs: Chocolate and Zucchini

Chocolate and Zucchini

I believe hoteliers without interest in food and beverage do not exist. However my problem this month is there is happening so much in Dutch (language) food and restaurant world, that I will never be able to translate any or all fast and efficient enough:

  • Dutch Gault Millau “guide” released, now in glossy format,
  • Dutch Annual “Lekker” released,
  • Dutch annual Special Bite paper issue released,

and

  • Dutch “Guide Michelin” to be released very soon,
  • New Dutch sites and lists sprouting up and still to be analysed…

Only the site of Special Bite giving some interesting information in the English Language, but no summaries of their paper guide…

Therefore I share with you a totally different piece of information I stumbled upon: Chocolate and Zucchini, a Blog by a 27 year young Parisian born lady, Clotilde Dusoulier, who started this blog already in 2003, long before the Big rush of Blogs in 2005 and 2006. She lives in Paris after having worked for two years in the San Francisco area.

Look for yourself here at Chocolate and Zucchini.

Qbic: Dutch answer to Easy Hotel, Yotel and Hotel Everland

Qbic

Begin November 2006 the launch of Qbic Hip Hotels was announced by Paul Rinkens, Rino Soeters en Marcel Voermans, the people behind Design hotel La Bergère and Hip Hotel St Martenslane, both in Maastricht, as the Dutch answer to cube alike hotel concepts as Easy Hotel, Yotel and Hotel Everland:

Qbic Hip Hotel Amsterdam Center (at WTC, Strawinskylaan 241) is anticipated to open in March 2007.

Qbic Hip Hotel Antwerpen (at Sint Paulusstraat 42 / Lange Koepoortstraat 6) is anticipated to open in June 2007.

Each Cube will cover 7 m2 with a living room, King Size Hästens beds, Philippe Starck design bathroom elements, TV, radio, safe and wireless Internet access.

With individually adjustable varicolored led lights guests can establish their own atmosphere. Easily changeable wall panels will give the guest the possibility to adjust the atmosphere further.

The lobby in Amsterdam will be designed by Feran Thomassen and for Antwerp by Ontwerpers.nu (i.e. Designers.Now!). They envisage a digital “concierge kiosk” where through an ‘i- touch’ screen guests can gather the necessary information about things to do, where to wine and dine and where to party, or to contact a Qbic staff member who will be available on site.

Also a self service shop is anticipated for all amenities and necessities.

Pricing will be done by the “the-earlier-the-reservation-the-lower-the-price” system and vary from Euro 39,- to Euro 139,-.

Realization by PRM.

Last edited by GJE on December 3, 2011 at 11:43 pm