“You’re not kidding, are you? I just got out of the gym so I haven’t followed the news yet.” Secretary Erwin Hemme of Oranjevereniging Zuidbarge is completely surprised by the news that King Willem-Alexander and his family will be celebrating King’s Day in Emmen next year. “That’s certainly good news.”
Center manager Laurens Meijer also hears the arrival of the Royal family in a special place: it is at Vilnius airport in Lithuania. “It was also completely new to me. I knew there were already some requests. This is fantastic for Emmen.” The entrepreneurs in the city center are also very happy. “I shared the news in the group app and everyone is so excited.”
At Ton Duivenvoorden of the Van der Valk hotel in Emmen, also chairman of Koninklijke Horeca Drenthe, the alarm bells went off earlier this week when dozens of hotel rooms were suddenly booked by the NOS for the period around King’s Day. “I then called the town hall, because you want to know what’s going on,” he explains. “It is absolutely positive for Emmen. For years we have been dangling at the bottom of the lists, this is a good motivation to finish at the top.”
Center manager Meijer immediately has the first ideas bubbling up when he thinks about what the Royal family can do on the day itself. “Raadhuisplein and the water, Wildlands or Marktplein towards the old center: we have a lot of places that look good on television. This is such good PR for the city. So many people watching.”
For Oranjevereniging Zuidbarge it will be extra party next year, because the club will also exist for another 75 years. Secretary Hemme is already looking forward to it. “We were thinking of all kinds of extra activities for this, so this is great. We have a barbecue tomorrow night with all the volunteers, then we will probably think about it further. And maybe we should also have an extra board meeting.”
The exact program will be further determined in the coming months. Meijer and Duivenvoorden are confident that something good will come out of it. “We are not sitting at the table to determine the program, but we must do everything we can to get the most out of it for entrepreneurs,” says Van Duivenvoorden. Meijer: “We can come up with anything, but we first have to know what the program will be.”
The last time the Royal family visited Drenthe on Queen’s Day/King’s Day was in 2002 in Meppel and Hoogeveen. The family was actually supposed to come in 2001, but that was not possible at the time because of the Mkz crisis. “Let’s hope that something like this will be spared us this time,” says Meijer. “I don’t deal with the king’s agenda, so I don’t know if it has been too long since he was in Drenthe,” says Van Duivenvoorden. “For example, the king was at the opening of Wildlands, but this is of course a much nicer event.”