Book puts New Zealand in a million dutch hands
A book giveaway in the Netherlands has meant a book about New Zealand is now owned by nearly one million Dutch people.
Every year during Dutch Book Week, a famous author is commissioned to write a ‘gift book’ that is given free to anyone who buys a Dutch book. Last week around 980,000 copies of the book A Table Full of Butterflies by Tim Krabb, a story that focuses on New Zealand, were given away with purchases.
That puts the book into one in every seven households in the country.
A Table Full of Butterflies is about the son of a travel journalist who goes to high school in New Zealand and embarks on adventures based on a book of Maori legends he was given as a child.
There were 25,171 visitors to New Zealand from the Netherlands in the year ended February 2009. This makes the country the third-largest source of visitors from Europe, behind the UK (273,120) and Germany (62,240).
The Dutch are high-spend and long-stay visitors, spending an average of $3,766 per visit (year ending September 2008).
Tourism New Zealand works closely with the travel trade in this market to build understanding and awareness of New Zealand. Eight Dutch product managers will visit New Zealand in April - one of 11 groups from off-shore that will visit during April and May as part of Tourism New Zealand’s trade familiarisation programme.
Dutch Book Week or ‘De Boekenweek’ runs for ten days in March. First held in 1932, it aims to remind the public of the wealth of books available in the bookshops the rest of the weeks of the year.
In a quirky twist, the Book Week gift can be used on one selected Sunday to travel free by Dutch Rail. On Sunday March 15th, 180,000 Dutch used the book to travel by train!