Reflections 2025
Facts & figures

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2025 was a strong year for Maastricht, with national and international recognition and plenty of visibility. We take you through the highlights of the past year. Such as the reach of our websites, social media and PR value.

Day visitors | Staying visitors | Maastricht in the media | Website reach | Reach newsletters | Social media reach | Google Ads | Read more

Strongest city brand

In May 2025, Maastricht was named the strongest city brand in the Netherlands in Hendrik Beerda Brand Consultancy's independent city and brand survey. According to Mayor Wim Hillenaar, this result is mainly due to the strength and uniqueness of the Maastricht community: "This first place confirms what we as Maastricht people have long felt: our city is unique. A city that people are proud of, whether they live, work or visit here. This recognition is a compliment to our residents, whose warmth and individuality make Maastricht special every day."

To news item

Maastricht panels in NS railway station

Since the end of May 2025, train passengers have been welcomed at Maastricht Centraal with banners enticing them to explore the city. By scanning the QR code, a webpage will open, showing what is on offer this day; from exhibitions and tours to culinary tips and the top 10 highlights. A great collaboration between Maastricht Marketing and NS.

Maastricht railway station

Maastricht film

In September 2025, we launched a new brand film 'Life in Maastricht'. This film takes you in just over a minute to see what life is like in the cosmopolitan city on the river Meuse, where history and future meet. From Roman traces to innovative ideas: here it buzzes with culture, innovation, creativity and international atmosphere. With the warmth of the people, the burgundian life and the unique Mestreech vibe, Maastricht is a city to live, work and enjoy. A place that grabs you, holds you and never lets you go....
To be used by everyone who wants to express their pride in Maastricht.

Day visitors

With 3.591 million visits and 1.439 million unique visitors*, Maastricht is clearly below the largest cities such as Amsterdam (12.248 million visits), Rotterdam (10.209 million) and Utrecht (8.670 million) in terms of number of day visits, but above a number of other medium-sized cities such as Dordrecht (3.115 million visits) and Leiden (2.838 million). What is striking is the relatively low visit frequency of 2.5, while the average of all cities is 3.2. In Maastricht, a relatively small proportion of visitors come from the home province (25%).

Maastricht is among one of the cities with the highest average spending per visitor, with an average amount of €97.30 and a relatively high proportion of visitors spending more than €100.

With a Net Promoter Score of 41, Maastricht has the highest willingness to recommend among visitors and is thus rated more positively on average than most other surveyed cities.

* Visitors include residents of the Netherlands who visit another municipality in their leisure time for leisure or pleasure. Visits with a business motive and visits to family, friends or acquaintances (at home) are excluded. Foreign day and residential tourists are also not included. Both tourist day visits and overnight visits by Dutch residents are included in the analysis, with the proportion of overnight visits usually being relatively limited.

  • Mouton blanc wolfstraat terrace

Staying visitors

In 2025, there were 1,619,151 hotel nights in our city (source: tourist tax Municipality of Maastricht). Looking at who stayed overnight in Maastricht, the majority of guests in (61%) in 2025 were from the Netherlands. Of foreign hotel guests in Maastricht, the vast majority were from European countries, with the largest numbers from Germany, Belgium or Spain. 23% of overnight stays had a business purpose.

Maastricht in the media

We work with a media monitoring tool from Media Info Groep that measures the PR value, potential reach and advertising value (AVE) of editorial coverage of Maastricht in online and offline media. In it, we keep track of the campaigns, projects and events to which Maastricht Marketing contributes in terms of PR. We boost PR value and potential reach by sending press releases, actively approaching and informing journalists and organising individual and group press trips.

  • New York Times

    'Discovering Maastricht's Hidden History, Underground'

    Visit

  • Flair

    'Burgundian cosiness 16 food & drink hotspots not to be missed in Maastricht'

    Visit

  • Einfach Raus

    'Große Lebensqualität in Maastricht'

    Visit

  • NS Days out

    'Rail and road trip Kastelenroute Zuid-Limburg'

    Visit

  • NRZ

    'Ein Tropfen Wahrheit: Wie man in Maastricht Krankheiten im Augenwinkel aufspürt'

    Visit

  • Libelle

    '5 reasons for a day out in Maastricht'

    Visit

  • BFR

    Sommer-TV

    Visit

Renewed Visit Maastricht platform

 

In June 2025, we launched our revamped quadrilingual online platform for Visit Maastricht. This website is fully in line with the redefined city brand and helps visitors and residents alike to put together their own experience of the city in an innovative way. The website is built around the principle of slow travel - travelling at a slower pace, with an eye for experience and context. The city and region's offerings are presented in magazine style and tailored to different lifestyles.

View the website

Website reach

Our websites reached a total of over 2.1 million unique users last year. After several years of growth, we see a decline in the number of visitors on VisitMaastricht.nl in 2025.

This development is linked to changes in online search behaviour. The use of search engines with AI and AI chatbots is increasing, making it more common for users to get direct answers without clicking through to websites. Also, when information comes from our own channels, this leads to less organic traffic.

We also worked on developing a new visitor website. In doing so, the domain has been adapted (except for the English-language version) and all languages have been brought together under one brand: Visit Maastricht. This provides more uniformity in our communication, but led to a short-term drop in traffic as pages had to be re-indexed by search engines.

Reach newsletters

Through various newsletters, we keep our target groups involved in what is going on and what is happening in Maastricht. In 2025, we published 91 newsletters on various topics.

Social media reach

We post daily on our social media channels. At scheduled moments, we bring recognisable themes, while in between we bring the experience of the city to life with atmospheric photos and videos. We are active on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.

Google Ads

With a general advertising campaign through Google Ads, we raise the profile of the city's offerings, focusing on culture, retail and hospitality. The ads were viewed over 2.2 million times and received 261,772 clicks through to our visitor website.

Read more - in Reflections 2025

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