Sustainable transportation

Amsterdam is well on its way to becoming the global capital of emission-free mobility. The city’s ambitious plan is to have 95% emission-free public transit by 2025 and to be completely emission-free by 2030. Local transportation is making huge strides and now the focus has shifted to stimulate business and leisure travellers to Amsterdam to choose environmental-friendly transportation.

Amsterdam’s meetings and events industry embraces the city’s sustainability goals: this is how you can reduce your carbon footprint and travel in an eco-friendly way to your meeting or event in Amsterdam. 

Amsterdam is a top destination for green meetings

Amsterdam is one of Europe’s top destinations for sustainable meetings and events. The city ranks highly on eco-friendly transportation, has plenty of sustainable event venues to offer, is a pioneer in green hotels and offers numerous options for sustainable leisure activities and conscious (group) dining.

But for a city that strives to be circular, carbon-neutral and climate adaptive by 2050 (link in Dutch), ambitions go beyond local and regional sustainability success. The City of Amsterdam wants to motivate and stimulate visitors to choose the most environmentally-friendly option to get to the city, especially if business and leisure visitors to Amsterdam live just 750 kilometres, or less, away.

What is the most eco-friendly way to get to your meeting in Amsterdam?

Sustainable transportation to your meeting destination is easy to organise: train travel. Did you know you can already reduce carbon emissions by 70% when travelling by train instead of taking a short-haul flight? Especially with short distances up to 750 km. This is because most fuel is consumed during the take-off and landing of an aircraft, so for long distances, relatively less fuel is consumed per kilometre travelled. 

A car has the same fuel consumption over the entire distance. If you travel by car, you need to travel with several people in one vehicle to achieve lower emissions per person. Buses get much better rankings on climate-friendliness than cars, but are not frequently used for business travel in the Meeting Industry.  

Still want/need to fly? Airline Air France-KLM offers its customers an option to compensate CO2 emissions, called CO2ZERO. With a small contribution you invest in CO2 reduction projects and you can make your flight CO2 neutral.

More benefits of travelling by train 

Trains from London, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Frankfurt and Berlin all arrive right in the heart of Amsterdam (Central Station) on a frequent basis. Taking into consideration that short-haul flights still require travel time to and waiting time at the airport, train travel often also has a time advantage. In addition, trains offer a comfortable way to travel and potentially productive too; you can bring a laptop and work on the train. Most international trains provide sockets to charge your laptop. Book all your international train journeys with NS International.

The high-speed train to Amsterdam: Thalys, Eurostar, ICE Deutsche Bahn 

The Thalys high-speed train has been operational between Paris and Amsterdam since 2010, with a maximum speed of 300 kilometres per hour, reducing the travelling time between both cities to 3.20 hours - and between Brussels and Amsterdam to 1.50 hours. 

Eurostar started services between London, Brussels and Paris in 1994. It added a direct London to Amsterdam service in October 2020, which takes around 4 hours and stops in Lille, Paris, Brussels and Rotterdam.

Deutsche Bahn offers several high-speed ICE connections with speeds up to 300km/h, connected with IC trains. The trip from Berlin to Amsterdam can take around 6.20 hours, while Frankfurt – Amsterdam will take only 3.5 hours. 

Eco-friendly transportation within Amsterdam 

Amsterdam is one of Europe's most sustainable cities when it comes to local transport. One reason is the high proportion of cyclists and pedestrians in Amsterdam’s transport mix: approximately 40% of all travelling in the city takes place by bicycle and 30% by walking. However, as mentioned earlier, public transit has been transformed in the past year, with all trams, subway trains and many buses running on green electricity since 2019. 

On top of that, several taxi companies (including TCA) use electric or hydrogen powered taxis. More than 75% of the commercial canal boats went electric and qualify as CO2 emission-free. And the city is investing in projects regarding Smart Mobility and Mobility as a Service (including shared electric cars and scooters). 

Come and meet green in Amsterdam

Ready to meet sustainably in Amsterdam and travel in an eco-friendly way to your event location? Let us know if we can help you! Contact the team of Amsterdam Convention Bureau by emailing meetings@iamsterdam.com or WhatsApp +31 (0)682747079. 

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