After 13 successful years Holland-Cycling.com will stop its activities at the beginning of 2026. Now that the cycling season of 2025 has come to an end the website will no longer be updated.
Holland-Cycling.com has taken us to many amazing places. Photo © Holland-Cycling.com
1.3 million visitors
In 2013 we set up the Holland-Cycling.com website because we wanted to share our passion for cycling in Holland with cyclists from abroad. There is so much more to explore by bike than just the canals in Amsterdam!
Back then there was little information available on cycling in Holland for non-Dutch speakers. By sharing our knowledge and expertise in English and providing independent information, we hoped to inspire cyclists to be more adventurous and discover the extensive Dutch cycle network that reaches far beyond the familiar tourist hotspots.
We had seriously underestimated how great the need was for accessible information on cycling in Holland. Right from day one visitors managed to find our site. To our great surprise we already found numerous links to our site on Wikipedia after only a week. Thanks for that!!! Over the years at least 1.3 million cyclists from 140 countries found their way to our site - quite an achievement for two keen cyclists with zero marketing budget!
Changes
Over the past 13 years we've seen many changes. Cycling has changed. Tourism has changed. The internet has changed. We have changed.
On the cycle path the traditional Dutch bike is now outnumbered by a wide range of e-bikes. But more importantly - after all, Holland-Cycling.com is primarily a website - internet technology has also radically changed.
Search engines like Google that once led users to the information on our website, which we presented and updated with so much care and effort, have now become 'answer engines'. This has huge consequences for us, as many potential visitors get an answer to their question before even reaching our site. But what answers are they getting? What useful information are they missing out on by not reaching our website and having a look around?
Theft of intellectual property
The recent introduction of generative AI means that we no longer have any control over how big tech companies are using our information. Is it still being presented in the right context? Is it independent and reliable? Is it being put to commercial use, which we never intended? How are our photos processed and what about the people that are portrayed?
Basically big tech companies are stealing our intellectual property. The big tech companies are the ones gaining from all the hours of work we have put into making and running our website, not us. Not you.
Why stop?
We had a lot of fun making Holland-Cycling.com, touring the country to take photos and meeting other cyclists online, on the cycle path and at events. When we started our website we rarely came across cyclists from abroad. Now we're happy to see that cyclists from many countries are exploring Holland by bike. We like to think we've contributed towards this trend and that our mission has been accomplished.
We would love to continue sharing our passion for cycling in Holland with all of you. The sad thing is that the big tech companies are taking over. Do we want to carry on working for them for free? The answer is no. Time has come for us to move on, focus on new things. It's up to other parties to continue the journey we started. I hope they enjoy it as much as we have.
Thank you!
Thanks to everyone for all the support and positive feedback we've received, for the lovely emails and comments and for simply visiting our website. We couldn't have done it without you.
Happy cycling! Who knows, maybe we will meet again sometime, somewhere when we're out cycling. After all, we're still two keen cyclists from Holland.
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