Starting with just three boats in 2016, Flagship Amsterdam is now Amsterdam’s largest canal tour operator.
Managing director Joey Blume explains how the company steered its success.
Flagship Amsterdam’s story
From humble beginnings to the largest boat operator in the Dutch capital.
Flagship Amsterdam started in 2016 on Amsterdam’s iconic canals — a daring adventure by three visionary boat owners, each operating their own business and own single boat. They decided it was time to collaborate, and it sparked a revolution in the city’s sightseeing landscape.
Their aim: reshape the traditional canal tour experience into something fresher, more modern, and truly memorable.
Challenging the status quo of a pretty traditional industry was needed. “At the time, the market was dominated by four or five large boat operators. Big, impersonal vessels with 80 to 90 people on them.
The founders knew they could do it differently, be more innovative, and focus on the customer experience,” Flagship Amsterdam’s managing director Joey Blume recalls.
Their approach was simple yet ingenious: focus on smaller, more intimate boats, each with its captain and host, teaming an engaging and personalized city tour with a floating bar experience. And that was just the beginning.
Fast-forward eight years, through a pandemic that saw tourism almost erased, and Flagship Amsterdam is now the largest boat operator in the city, with more than 55 boats and a peak staff of around 500 people. Here, Joey tells us about the company’s remarkable growth and how their partnership with GetYourGuide played a role in that success.
How did Flagship Amsterdam grab the opportunity to shake up the industry?
“Most of the boats on the canals were huge — an audio guide, no F&B, and a standard one-hour tour. Flagship Amsterdam’s smaller open boats immediately stood out. They could take groups of 25–30 people, and each boat had a captain, a host, and a bar — you got a unique experience where the host told the stories of Amsterdam in a nice, informal way, and you could order a drink. We had two new propositions: the open boats with the floating bar and the saloon boats, where guests could enjoy wine and Dutch cheese as they cruised the canals.”
How did you make sure this new proposition was noticed among the competition?
“Our luxury open boats already stood out, and we wanted to make sure people saw them and said, ‘I want to go on one of those’ — in summer, everyone wants to be in the open boats when the sun is shining. After we partnered with GetYourGuide, many of our boats were co-branded, so it was quite clear where to book too, like a floating advert.”
Why did you team up with GetYourGuide?
“We aren’t allowed to have direct offline sales, we don’t have ticket offices like some of the traditional boat companies with their own quays, so our sales have to happen online for the most part. As well as our own site, we knew that working with strong partners would boost sales, and from 2018, when we partnered with GetYourGuide, we just grew and grew. The personal contact we have with GetYourGuide is great.”
What was that growth period like?
“At the moment, we have more than 55 boats and are by far the biggest boat company here, all in just seven years. It’s quite unique as in Amsterdam, there’s a ceiling on how many boat licenses can be issued in the city. But the results kept getting better. We got more boats. As the company grew, we needed more structure and the ability to streamline processes, care for our staff and customers better, and put people in the right places. We have about 200 people working throughout the year, and we flex up to around 500 in peak season. You need to be quite clear on your company vision and what you expect from people.”
How did you optimize it?
“Well, the more boats, the more availability, and that helps. We’re always focused on availability, 365 days a year. It helps us stay on top of GetYourGuide and other OTAs’ rankings, and we are constantly looking at the data. Do we need to scale up or down? What is the weather doing? Do we need more open or covered boats on the canals? Are there enough captains and hosts available? Finding a sweet spot with all those things is crucial. A mix of data and insights, knowing when the peaks will be from previous years, and real-time reactivity help you be as dynamic and efficient as possible. We keep learning and hopefully, it becomes more and more data-driven.”
What data can you leverage from GetYourGuide?
“GetYourGuide’s dashboard helps — we can see when and how tickets are booked at a glance to get even more insight into the behavior of our customers and stay dynamic. And that personal relationship with our account manager plays into it. Of course, he’s not giving us insights about our competitors, and we’re not asking, but we can talk about what is happening in Amsterdam and in other cities and learn from it. Do we need to look at content, pricing, or our product? It’s trial and error, but we have a good overview of what might work.”
And you also learn a lot from customer reviews?
“We have around 25,000 reviews on GetYourGuide, about 65,000 on TripAdvisor, and almost 45,000 of them 5-star reviews. Proactively asking for reviews is the only way to get them, and it’s a little different with GetYourGuide as they ask for reviews after the experience on our behalf. We have a relatively new customer care department that is constantly reading everything our customers say, good and bad, and we have a specialized academy for our staff so the quality of the customer’s experience is always improving.”
What’s the strangest thing a customer has requested?
“For me, there’s nothing strange anymore. From tulip boats to boats for the Red Bull Formula 1 team to proposals, even funerals. We’ve done everything.”
Key takeaways
From 1,400 tickets sold through GetYourGuide in 2019 to more than 200,000 tickets in 2023: Flagship Amsterdam grew by optimizing and increasing availability.
The company anchored its success by hyper-focusing on its core product. When trialing new products, it made sure its original standout product remained its strongest asset.
Flagship Amsterdam made its visual identity a key part of its success. Distinctive branding exercises extended the kerbside appeal of their open boats to digital platforms.
The company uses dashboard data and insights, local knowledge, and robust operations to flexibly optimize availability across its fleet, which has grown from three to 55 boats.Customer reviews across platforms are used to constantly improve the experience. Flagship Amsterdam and GetYourGuide proactively request feedback to aid this.
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