horticulture
Millions lost at Floriade – city government resigns
Willem-Alexander (r), King of the Netherlands, at the opening of the Floriade Expo 2022 gardening exhibition in April. Photo: Remko De Waal/ANP/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The Dutch city of Almere set up the Floriade with a lot of effort and high costs. But so far there have been far fewer visitors than expected – a financial fiasco.
The international garden exhibition Floriade in Almere, Netherlands, is heading for a major financial fiasco. Since there are far fewer visitors than expected, losses of 34 million euros are to be expected, according to the organization.
“Far too few people come. This is a great disappointment and a financial drama, »said the city government. She now drew the political conclusions and resigned on Friday night.
The municipality in the north-east of Amsterdam had already spent around 41.5 million euros on the Floriade, which was also a multiple of the originally planned costs. The Floriade, which takes place at a different location in the country every ten years, was only opened by King Willem-Alexander in April.
There had already been criticism at the opening, since not all pavilions were finished by a long shot. Visitors had also complained about the far too high prices. Since April, only around 230,000 people had visited the show, just a third of the expected number. The organization cites high inflation and Corona as reasons for the low number of visitors. She is now hoping for a total of 1.2 million visitors by the end of October 9th. Originally, two million visitors were expected.