Dutch Travel Panel
The Dutch Travel Panel provides a rich, continuous source of data on the mobility and activities of people in the Netherlands. Since 2019, the daily trips of around 10,000 participants have been recorded, offering unparalleled insight into how, when, and why people travel.
A unique source of information
The Dutch Travel Panel is an initiative of Dat.mobility (part of Goudappel), Mobidot and Kantar. It captures all out-of-home trips – across every mode of transport, including walking. In addition to travel movements, the data provides insight into the purpose and activities of each trip and participants’ socio-demographic characteristics, offering a detailed picture of mobility behaviour.
The Dutch Travel Panel stands out thanks to the following features:
- Continuous measurement allows long-term trend monitoring, with data available retrospectively, from 2019 onwards.
- Longitudinal tracking enables comparisons of behaviour across different time periods, on both national, regional and city level. This makes it possible to study mobility patterns in fine detail.
- Covering both domestic and international trips, the panel offers valuable insights into travel volumes, mode choices, and popular destinations.
- Custom surveys can be deployed to uncover participants’ underlying motivations or to collect additional information, enabling for highly targeted analyses (for example, among daily car commuters).
- Exact route data is available for all transport modes, including walking trips.
- Real-time data availability ensures up-to-date insights.
Privacy protections
With participants’ consent, a smartphone app records when, how, where, and by which mode of transport they travel. Combined with relevant background characteristics, this information delivers valuable aggregated and anonymised insights. All data is processed with great care and fully in line with GDPR requirements; any information that could identify individuals is protected.
Privacy protections
With participants’ consent, a smartphone app records when, how, where, and by which mode of transport they travel. Combined with relevant background characteristics, this information delivers valuable aggregated and anonymised insights. All data is processed with great care and fully in line with GDPR requirements; any information that could identify individuals is protected.
The Dutch Travel Panel in practice
Several Dutch municipalities, provinces and ministries use the Dutch Travel Panel to:
- Understand changing mobility patterns: for example, how travel behaviour evolves over time.
- Monitor, evaluate and compare the impact of mobility policies and programmes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management used the panel’s data to assess the effectiveness of national measures.
Beyond the public sector, the data also support tourism boards, marketing agencies and event organisers seeking insight into visitor flows, transport choices and movement speeds – helping them to design more effective campaigns and improve their services.
Turning data into insights: the NVP Analyzer
To make these valuable data easily accessible, Goudappel developed the NVP Analyzer – an online quick-scanning tool providing direct access to multimodal travel and activity data from panel participants. All client-specific datasets can be added to the Analyzer, so that users can:
- Explore mobility patterns and visualise results through interactive dashboards.
- Conduct target group analyses based on socio-demographic data (such as age or household composition)
- Export maps and graphs for reporting or communication purposes.
Applying the approach internationally
The Dutch Travel Panel is a proven concept that could be applied in any context. As Dutch market leader in mobility planning and modelling, Goudappel works with an international network of local partners to share our expertise. While local partners are always responsible for setting up and operating panels outside the Netherlands, we are happy to advice you on how to design and manage a succesvol travel panel and how to analyse and interpret mobility data effectively.
