Rotterdam airport goes international
We’ve been learning the hard way that anything in English is ‘chic’, right? So why would 2009 be any different? According to De Telegraaf, a discussion has been going on for 15 years (!) about changing the name of Rotterdam Airport to… drum roll… Rotterdam-The Hague Airport. It’s not so much about having an English-language name (in Dutch, Den Haag) as associating the airport with a city that in turn is associated with “justice and peace” by foreigners because of the international court. Will Obama have the US finally recognise ‘our’ court? Oops, tangent.
It’s a marketing thing. And a lot of us are flying out of Germany because of the ecotax anyways – I know I am. The lesson here is apparently that The Hague is chic abroad, and Rotterdam is not. That I leave up to the people.
(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo: rotterdamairportcarrental.com)
Tags: Rotterdam Airport, The Hague
January 14th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Ah là là … you could call it pragmatism, I call it colonized mentality. When I travel I love having an airport with a cool foreign name, like Førde or Den Haag, don’t you? What’s the point of leaving if it’s to be surrouned by familiar names? Where is the fun, where is the exotism?
January 14th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
No wonder I enjoy flying out of Düsseldorf with its skytrain http://www.monorails.org/tmspages/SkyTrain.html
January 15th, 2009 at 7:46 am
I used to fly from Zürich because the name of the airport. Now they have changed it I don’t go there anymore.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Rotterdam-Den Haag works for me. Just as Telefoon works for me. The more vowels the better.
January 27th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Rotterdam-Den Haag sounds to me like a two hour train ride with detours and delays 😛