On the last day of the Floriade in Almere, the ailing world horticultural exhibition suddenly comes to life. Visitors walk even on the most remote paths of the sprawling park and the stands for the weekly concert are packed to the brim. The quirky stands of India and Sudan – glorified souvenir shops where you can buy wooden elephants – are also packed. The temporary price reduction in the last week (5 euros for Flevolanders, although it was no longer valid on the last day) has attracted a lot of last-minute audience.
That has been different in the past six months. In fact, the Floriade should have attracted 2.2 million paying visitors, but shortly after King Willem-Alexander festively opened the park in April, it turned out that this was not possible. At the end of August, the counter stood at only 473,768.
The organization knows this from corona: after the pandemic, the Dutch had less appetite for day attractions. But the high entrance prices also played a role, the scathing reviews and the fact that the exhibition was not finished when it opened, despite ten years of preparation.
Grandchildren
“It is such a shame that many people have been deterred by this,” says Henk Boesveld from Zeewolde. “I’ve been ten times. We took everyone with us: children, grandchildren. You only experience something like this once in your life, you must have been there. There are a lot of Germans walking here, they love it. I don’t understand why we are so bitter about it in the Netherlands.”
“Of course things have also been handled clumsily,” adds fan Remco (who does not want his last name in the newspaper), who visited the Floriade eight times. “That cable car that should have taken visitors from one end of the site to the other now only goes in a circle. So you end up at the point where you entered. That’s nice as an attraction, but the whole idea of ’the cable car as an energy-efficient means of transport’ is suddenly under threat. Moreover, you now have to walk very far: the reason I didn’t get my parents here.”
Also read: An interim look at the Floriade after a few months
Heavy financial blow
The disappointing visitor numbers mean a serious financial blow to the municipality of Almere. In total, the municipality has already spent more than 90 million euros on the Floriade, more than nine times as much as was budgeted in 2012. A record loss, and according to Omroep Flevoland, that amount is still rising towards 100 million. In order to reduce the red numbers a bit, the organization hoped to be able to close the event with 680,000 visitors, partly thanks to the price reduction to 5 euros.
If it is up to Almeerders Niels van der Sluis and Sandra Soeters, it will work. “I’m literally going to call friends right now to get them here right away.” They have been driving along the Floriade site for months now. Now they are in for the first time. “It’s much nicer here than I expected after all the messages. We thought it was a kind of Keukenhof here, with endless rows of flower bulbs. We knew that. We’re really sorry we’re only coming now.”
Cable car
The park could have remained open even longer for volunteer Frans. From the cable car he once again overlooks the park from a great height. “It was fun every day. For his son Rens, who is sitting next to him, it is precisely the first (and last) time. He does come to have a look at the last minute as a tribute to his father. “They just made a lot of wrong choices in the beginning. The first weeks it was dead and damned here and the entrance fee was much too high.’ There is silence in the small cabin for a moment. “But today we’re just going to have fun.”