Our Story

Cynthia’s family ran a local taxi company in Sassenheim, a taxi company originally started by her grandparents and later passed on to her parents. Jaap’s family has been growing flowers for generations. His grandfather had a flower nursery in Lisserbroek, which his father took over and eventually handed to his brother. The nursery has grown with the times: alongside their own crossbred dahlias, his brother and his sons now also cultivate hydrangeas.

Today, we live right at the heart of it all: steps from Sassenheim station, with flower fields nearby and the annual Flower Parade passing through the street next to our house every spring. We are raising our three boys here, in the middle of everything that makes this region so special. From March onwards, millions of visitors arrive from all over the world. And every season, we find ourselves talking to them.

There are parents visiting an expat child, combining the trip with the Flower Parade. There are travellers who happen to be in the Netherlands during this period and stumble upon the fields almost by chance. And there are visitors who fly in from Japan specifically for the Flower Parade.

Every single one of them has a story.

Between us, we have spent years in tourism, service and research. Cynthia has worked for over twenty years as cabin crew for a major Dutch airline, meeting international travellers every single day and understanding first-hand what makes a journey truly memorable. Always talking to people, always listening. Not guessing what someone might enjoy, but actually asking. That habit never left us. It is the foundation of everything LocalDutchWays is built on.

When we ask visitors whether they have seen that one beautiful field with the lookout tower, or the castle ruin just a few kilometres away, the answer is almost always the same:

People are used to finding things themselves. Traditional travel agents are largely gone, and there is no shortage of information online or through AI. But a single place where everything comes together, built on genuine local knowledge? That does not exist. Not when we search ourselves, and not based on the feedback we hear from the tourists we speak to.