Smart sailing in Giethoorn: how this app prevents traffic jams and makes your day on the water more relaxing

Giethoorn, the fairytale village where you sail through picturesque canals, attracts over a million visitors every year. But on busy days, the idyllic water village turns into a real traffic jam of whisper boats, with jammed sailing routes and frustrated tourists. Fortunately, there is now a smart solution: the Giethoorn Village Sailing App.

This innovative app helps visitors sail through Giethoorn smoothly and without stress. You get live insight into the crowds, smart sailing routes and even priority when renting a boat. This makes your day in Giethoorn even more fun and relaxing. Read on quickly and discover how this app changes sailing in Giethoorn forever!

Giethoorn attracts 1 million visitors per year

In 2023, the popular water village welcomed around 1 million visitors from home and abroad, more than half of whom rented a boat. In 2024, around 1 million visitors were welcomed. On busy days, around 40 per year, between 10,000 and 15,000 tourists come to Giethoorn, with peaks between 11:00 and 16:00. The village canal often quickly fills up with boats that get in each other's way, making it difficult to sail forwards or backwards.

Kris Mulder: “What do you expect, if all (rental) boats have to sail through the same 2200 meters of canal." Everyone knows these kinds of images of stranded boats from social media and makes the national news every year. A common complaint is that it is difficult to follow the correct sailing routes. Renters often receive a physical route map, but it is difficult to recognize the color codes on the poles along the water and to choose the right course in time.

Largest boat rental company takes responsibility

To solve this problem, he developed the Giethoorn Village Boating App. This app offers tourists the most beautiful (new) sailing routes through and around the picturesque village. Giethoorn Village now has more than 250 boats available for rent, and more and more landlords in the village are using the app to help tourists choose a boat and a beautiful sailing route. Giethoorn Village is the largest party in Giethoorn that rents out boats. This also involves a certain amount of responsibility. This is one of the reasons why Giethoorn Village has developed a sailing route app. The costs of developing the app are entirely borne by Giethoorn Village.

Is it busy in Giethoorn today?

Checking whether Giethoorn is busy at home on the couch. How cool is that? Well, this idea came from employee Robert Doevendans. Doevendans: “All (250+) boats rented by Mulder have a GPS system. By sharing this data with the app, you can see live which sailing route in Giethoorn is busy or nice and quiet. In addition, you can also check live on the Giethoorn Village website where the boats rented by Giethoorn Village are located.” Doevendans: “So you can check whether Giethoorn is busy at home on the couch. This live viewing can also be an advantage for fellow entrepreneurs and the municipality.”

Preventing collisions

The Giethoorn Village Vaar-App offers several advantages for both tourists and entrepreneurs. "Rental companies using the app are spread out over different locations along the popular sailing routes. This helps to spread the crowds, which contributes to reducing nuisance and preventing unnecessary collisions. Although collisions usually occur at low speed, they cause damage and additional maintenance costs for rental companies," says Mulder.

With the app on your phone you get priority

The app makes it easier for tourists to find their way, with different routes of different lengths. Mulder: "Tourists who have already installed the app get priority when renting a boat. This encourages the use of the app even more."

The municipality also helps

The municipality of Steenwijkerland also contributes to spreading the crowds by making a stretch of water (safely) navigable again. "Around April 2025, the shipping routes will safely run via this waterway, which will provide an additional 1600 meters of village canal. Together with the current 2200 meter long village canal, the total length of the village canal in Giethoorn is estimated at 3800 meters. That is of course great news," says Mulder. The 3800 meter village canal runs from the outermost part of the Zuiderpad to the outermost part of the Binnenpad.

More landlords join

In the future, the sailing routes will not only be expanded further, but efforts are also being made to increase the number of landlords who join the app. This lobby is ongoing. Currently, 13 landlords are participating. Landlords can register with the organization behind the Giethoorn Village Vaar-App. "By working together, we can create more sailing routes, which contributes to a better distribution of the boats on the water."

Sustainability as an added benefit

An additional advantage is sustainability. Mulder: "Instead of printing route maps over and over again, the app is now used, which can be reused indefinitely."