Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport has embarked on a new strategy. Instead of wanting to be the biggest, it now intends to be Europe’s preferred airport.

Schiphol, along with rival hubs at London Heathrow, Frankfurt and Paris Charles de Gaulle, is a leading European gateway. Its reputation for ease and speed of use has won Holland’s flagship airport Business Traveller’s reader-voted award for Best Airport in Europe almost every year for the past two decades.

But the size limitations of the Dutch market in relation to other countries mean Schiphol is different from its rivals. Most of its passengers are changing planes rather than ending or starting their journeys in the Netherlands. And Schiphol is wooing them with its revamped Holland Boulevard. The idea is to offer a more interesting experience for the transiting passengers who are the airport’s raison d’être. They can while away the couple of hours they might spend changing planes by sampling typical Dutch attractions. Better still, if they like what they see, then Schiphol hopes they will revisit the country on a future trip.

Passengers will find Holland Boulevard along the main promenade between Piers E and F. Here you can book a tour into central Amsterdam (four hours is needed and passengers must be in possession of a valid passport and visa, if required). During April and May, the famous Keukenhof flower gardens are another possibility, but you will need to allow more than four hours for this.

The Dutch Kitchen serves typical foods such as poffertjes (miniature pancakes) and kroketten (croquettes). At the Dutch bar, you can sample local beer and other alcoholic beverages.

Another feature of the Boulevard is the Back to Life foot, chair and aqua massages designed to re-energise you during your stopover. Or you can sample the oxygen bar, which is said to help you recover from jetlag.

There is a scaled-down version of Amsterdam’s renowned Rijksmuseum and a library, believed to be a world’s first for an airport. Here you will find literature in 29 languages along with a number of iPads available for passenger use.

Schiphol wants its travellers to feel more comfortable when boarding their planes, and to this end it is trialling an Innovative Gate. This one-off facility is in operation until January at Gate 7, along Pier G, which handles long-haul flights. At present, the Innovative Gate is for the use of passengers taking Cathay Pacific’s daily B747 flight to Hong Kong.

Existing boarding areas with their hard-backed seating can appear severe. While premium passengers can escape this environment by heading for the various lounges, passengers in economy class have little choice. Many find the boarding area an unwelcoming experience, especially when they are facing a 12-hour flight.

The airport authority has worked closely with international Dutch electronics firm Philips to create a more spacious and relaxing atmosphere for passengers, with special lighting effects and softer seating. The gate area covers 700 sqm in two sections. Most of the space is given over to economy passengers, but there is a small zone for premium passengers. It has its own toilets, and security is provided by full body scanners.

When all is said and done, however, Schiphol’s main claim to fame is its “single terminal” concept. Other main hub airports in Europe operate with anything between two (Frankfurt or Munich) and four separate terminals (Heathrow). It also boasts five runways, more than any other airport in Europe.

A single terminal makes transiting easier because you, the passenger, can control the time it takes to get from your arrival to your departure gate. The downside is that as an airport grows, the distance between gates increases (depending on the countries between which you are flying). Schiphol has walkways to ease the pain. What you cannot control is immigration clearance when proceeding out of, or into, a Schengen Area destination. But you are unlikely to find the same queues at Schiphol as you do at, say, Heathrow.

Another advantage at the Dutch airport is the ample supply of airbridges. Even when you arrive on a 40-seater commuter plane, you will park alongside a gate. Over several decades of using Schiphol with a variety of aircraft types, never once have I encountered the situation (as I have at Frankfurt, Gatwick, Heathrow, Munich and Paris CDG) where my plane has ended up being parked on a remote stand, sometimes a couple of miles from the terminal, and I have lost time waiting for the transfer bus to the airport building.

Schiphol says its single terminal will remain for the foreseeable future, and that it will cope with future growth by extending the existing Pier A. However, the length of that pier might require some form of people-mover for those with long ground transfers.

For now, passenger growth has slowed. The economic situation has taken its toll along with the much-criticised “eco” tax. Schiphol’s capacity is currently between 60 and 65 million, but last year it handled just over 43 million.

The good news is that the eco tax was scrapped in July last year and passenger numbers are now recovering. During this period, many flyers deserted Schiphol and the Dutch government lost more revenue than it gained. “Schiphol lost an estimated 1.3 million passengers as a result of the eco tax,” an airport spokesperson says. “We hope people will return with the ending of this tax.”

Although airports do not like to discuss their rivals’ misfortunes, Amsterdam Schiphol seems certain to benefit from a similar tax being introduced in Germany from the start of next year (see In Focus, page 16). Just as some Dutch passengers defected to airports in Germany and Belgium to avoid the tax, the same would seem likely to happen in reverse when Germany’s charge takes effect.

Mind you, a number of travellers in the populous German region of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), which borders Holland, have used Schiphol for many years thanks to its range of destinations and ease of access by road and rail. NRW’s capital city of Dusseldorf is roughly as far from Schiphol as Birmingham is from Heathrow. But it would seem more NRW residents will follow their lead.

Visit schiphol.com

Schedule changes

Schiphol is dominated by home carrier KLM and its Skyteam partners. Together they cover most of the world. The main transatlantic routes are operated by Delta, which operates to ten US destinations plus India (Mumbai).

It is a leading springboard for Delta’s hubs in Detroit (three daily flights) and Minneapolis (twice daily). The carrier recently added a third daily flight to JFK to compete with Star Alliance carriers United and Continental. Delta’s new JFK schedules provide an earlier departure from Schiphol and an earlier arrival on the return.

Most Delta Air Lines flights are codeshared with partner KLM so services connect passengers to the American hinterland through its US gateways. On the return, the Delta flights feed passengers at Schiphol on to KLM’s short- and long-haul network.

Strong scheduling by Skyteam carriers and the limited Dutch market have traditionally kept foreign (non-Skyteam) long-distance rivals at bay. Singapore Airlines, for example, is quite weak in the Dutch market. Its single daily flight to Singapore is covered by a two-class B777-200 that does not have the latest premium seating. Financially troubled JAL recently quit Schiphol in favour of the greater passenger potential at Frankfurt, Paris CDG and London Heathrow.

The arrival of two competitors in the summer was welcomed as it meant more competition and, consequently, a better deal for passengers. Indonesian national carrier Garuda returned to Schiphol in June with a daily two-class A330 service to Jakarta, with an en route stop in Dubai. It is the carrier’s sole European route and there are onward links across Indonesia and on to Australia.

Even more noteworthy was the arrival of Emirates a month earlier. The Middle East carrier is operating a daily Dubai service with a three-class B777-200LR. It is one of the few long-range carriers to offer a first class product in the Dutch market. What is surprising is why it took Emirates so long. In the past, executives I spoke to all blamed the local market’s limitations but this excuse always appeared lame since the Dutch like travelling to South East Asia and Emirates serves areas of the world with Dutch expat communities.

Emirates’ flight arrives into Schiphol around lunchtime and returns in the mid-afternoon, perfectly timed for onward links both within the region and further afield to Asia and Australasia.

Although Emirates is the sole Gulf airline serving Schiphol, it is believed Qatar Airways has also gained traffic rights but these have not yet been taken up.

On the budget front, Easyjet is continuing to build on its mini hub. The carrier already serves more than 12 destinations from Schiphol, and this winter sees the addition of Barcelona (one daily flight) along with Manchester and Berlin Schoenefeld. The latter two cities are served twice daily with typical early-out and late afternoon/early evening returns. But the daily flight to Doncaster has been scrapped.