The Netherlands Government is sending asylum seekers en masse to hotels across the country due to a lack of appropriate centres – at some cost, it has been revealed.
More than 8,000 asylum seekers are currently residing in at least 50 hotels and holiday parks in the Netherlands at an estimated total cost of around €4 million per week.
The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) is resorting to utilising hotels as accommodation. The resulting pressure on the country’s finances, with thousands of asylum seekers arriving on a monthly basis, is biting.
Yet there are not enough shelters for these people, forcing the authorities to come up with alternatives, although details of the search are not made public.
Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf noted on March 25: “Negotiations between hotels and the COA usually remain secret.”
The news organisation said it had obtained the amounts forked out by the COA: “Crisis reception costs on average: Some €77 per asylum seeker per day, double the cost of a stay in a normal asylum-seekers’ centre.
“Renting roughly 8,000 asylum beds in hotels thus costs COA some €600,000 per day or €4.2 million per week,” the newspaper reported.
The hotels in question are said to be getting a “good deal”, making large hotel chains stand in line for accepting all-inclusive asylum seekers in exchange for taxpayers’ money.
The arrivals are, it is reported, assured of rooms and three meals per day.
De Telegraaf warned: “In the COA’s financial accountability report, the organisation admits that it has only ‘limited negotiating power’ when it comes to renting emergency accommodations such as cruise ships and hotels.
“When the COA approaches, the rental rates can easily rise.”
At the end of January, the Netherlands’ caretaker Cabinet announced an additional €600 million had to be allocated for asylum reception – on top of the €4 billion already earmarked.
Geert Wilders, of the right-wing Freedom Party (PVV), who won the national elections promising a clamp-down on mass immigration, said on X: “This needs to stop.”
MP Mona Keijzer of the Farmer-Citizen Movement chipped in: “The asylum crisis is completely out of control financially; the billions are flying out of the State coffers.”
She also pointed out that the mass arrival of asylum seekers further increased the pressure on the domestic housing market.
Owners of shops, stores and restaurants near the rented-out hotels in smaller municipalities are also complaining. The presence of large numbers of asylum seekers in hotels keeps tourists away, many local business operators allege, threatening the incomes of small-to-medium-sized retailers.
“At the local level, this is felt by entrepreneurs,” the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions warned.