HOLLAND, MI -- For eight days, 6 million tulips bloom in Holland city parks, along sidewalks and on street corners.
The city population blooms, too, from 34,000 people to more than half a million people — crouched on the ground, high up in windmills and running through fields.
Even more importantly, that flurry of tourists is rolling in on motorcoaches, filling up hotel rooms and reserving dinner tables.
The Tulip Time festival is intertwined with the City of Holland’s economy, especially as the city pulls forward as a four-season, international destination.
The festival is the quaint beach town’s $48 million kickoff to summer and it’s put the city on a worldwide stage for travel.
Iconic image
It doesn’t matter where in the world Linda Hart is, if she says she’s from Holland, Michigan, the first question she gets is about tulips.
“They don’t say heated sidewalks or Lake Michigan or energy plan or hotbed for new industry. They say tulips. So, we take advantage of that,” said Hart, executive director of the Holland Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Tulips have become Holland’s built-in brand, universally recognized like Coca-Cola and McDonalds. Holland was lucky enough to be gifted the idea by a local teacher.
In 1927, Lida Rogers, a biology teacher at Holland High School, spoke to a Woman’s Literary Club meeting about what she called “civic beauty” and suggested Holland adopt the tulip as its flower because of its close ties to the Netherlands. She recommended a festival take place to draw in visitors.
The next year, the City Council purchased 100,000 tulip bulbs from the Netherlands for a “Tulip Day,” and the following year, thousands of visitors came to see them bloom. By the mid-1930s, Tulip Time was a nationally known event, extending into nine days.
Rogers was way ahead of her time.
Now the city is standing on her shoulders, leveraging civic beauty into economic development.
Related: Guide to the 95th Tulip Time Festival
Dutch hospitality
You can see tulips in Washington state or Canada, or go all the way to the Netherlands. But you can only get the Tulip Time experience in Michigan.
The community involvement is what sets Holland apart from the rest of the world. Thousands of volunteers power Tulip Time, a small nonprofit run by a staff of 10.
It’s the Dutch hospitality that gives Tulip Time the 91% recommendation rating, according to a 2018 economic study by Hope College.
Since the pandemic, the festival is “booming and bigger than it has been in a long time,” said Holland Mayor Nathan Bocks.
It’s not just that the pandemic spurred a travel tsunami – Michigan is still riding that wave – but the shutdown gave locals exclusive access to Tulip Time, reigniting their interest in the festival
There was no 2020 festival, but in 2021, Tulip Time was one of the first to attempt a large, socially distanced, outdoor festival.
“Locals went to see flowers and enjoy the flowers in a way that they had not done for years and years because a lot of locals say, ‘I’m going to stay away from the crowds,’” Bocks said. “What that did is activate a feeling in the community of, ‘I want to be part of this.’”
That’s translated to more volunteers, more tour guides and more Dutch Dancers, said Bocks, who previously sat on the festival board and has been a tour guide since 1994.
Related: ‘You can’t buy this on Amazon.’ Holland’s Dutch Dancing costumes stay true to 19th century heritage
The pause in 2020 was also a moment for the Holland’s tourism bureau, the city, the parks department and the festival office to reset and reorganize.
West Michigan had what every cooped-up traveler was looking for: fresh water, green space and outdoor activities.
The organizations started to work closer together and leverage their message further, Hart said. They kept the billboards, but invested more heavily in digital marketing.
They found new audiences in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas and Missouri.
As southern states continued to have days over 100 degrees, visitors from Texas, Florida and Arizona started showing up too, finding reprieve in Michigan’s climate haven.
“The message is bleeding out. People are hearing about Michigan – Pure Michigan – and we’re piggybacking off that,” Hart said.
Nathan Suchecki, director of hotel operations at Suburban Inns, is noticing the change in his parking lot.
License plates from Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana are becoming more frequent at the Courtyard by Marriott Holland Downtown.
More miles traveled means longer stays. The average stay is 2.7 days. That extra shoulder day translates to one more dinner reservation at the adjoining Big E’s Sports Grill or one more coffee at The Bistro.
The festival is in the top three revenue periods for the hotel, alongside summer weekends like Fourth of July and Grand Haven’s Coast Guard Festival.
The stakes are even higher the first weekend of the festival, as it overlaps with Hope College’s graduation.
That’s where the Dutch hospitality comes in.
Starting in March, Suchecki starts adding 25% more staff to the roster to keep things running smoothly when there’s a line out the door for early check-in.
An international stage
The scene goes like this: Two lovers meet in a field of tulips. They run towards each other, singing. They wax poetic about the impossibility of their love after being caught in a love triangle. It’s a dream come true and they can’t bear to be apart.
“Even flowers between us create a distance.”
It’s a quintessential moment from the Bollywood cult classic Silsila, filmed at Keukenhof gardens in the Netherlands.
It’s not a scene Tulip Time organizers were familiar with until they noticed a large and frequent group of Indian and Indian Americans visiting the festival every year and they finally asked what drew them to Holland.
“In northern India, tulips are native there, too. In their culture, they love tulips just like the Dutch do,” said Matt Helmus, Windmill Island Gardens Development Manager.
The Tulip Time Festival board of directors had a Bollywood movie night to join in on the experience. Last year, Delhi, India, started a 12-day Tulip Festival.
The 152,000 tulips planted on Windmill Island draw in 75,000 visitors during the festival – half of the island’s overall visitor count for it’s six-month season. Since the pandemic, the island has broken visitor records every year and is on track to do so again this year, Helmus said.
Much like downtown, it’s a true melting pot of international visitors.
While travelers from China have not returned in pre-pandemic numbers, the tourism bureau has found success upping their marketing in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Hart said.
Tulip Time’s trophy case has opened doors for Holland, Hart said.
The festival and city took top honors nationally at America in Bloom and USA Today’s Best Flower Festival and globally at the International Garden Tourism Conference and World Tulip Summit.
With these accolades, Hart got a seat at last year’s U.S. Travel Association’s IPW, the leading international inbound travel trade show.
The opportunity put Holland alongside Michigan tourism hotspots like Mackinac Island, Traverse City and Frankenmuth, Hart said.
After 95 years, Tulip Time is selling itself. Holland wants to leverage that to show it’s a four-season destination with sports, motorcoaches, an aquarium and the brand-new ice rink set to open next year.
“Everybody comes for Tulip Time,” Hart said. “Now let’s get the other 50 weeks of the year.”
