Only once every ten years does it bloom in a particularly colorful way.

And now that all the beds for the world garden show Floriade have been planted again in a Dutch city – in 2022 it will be Almere, 20 kilometers east of Amsterdam – big business is beginning for the travel agency Trendtours.

The four-day tour includes a boat and cable car ride through the park, as well as a "coffee party".

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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Trendtours is Germany's largest direct travel provider.

Bus trips are central to the programme, and the target group is travelers aged 55 and over.

Boss Markus Daldrup consistently calls them “best agers”, which sounds more modern than older people or pensioners.

Corona forced him to get help from the federal economic stabilization fund – but not a billion euros, but 23 million euros.

Beyond the pandemic restrictions, Daldrup sees the business as extraordinarily crisis-proof.

“Pension increase is good for our business”

Rising food and energy costs don't seem like a big issue.

The war in the Ukraine led to a state of shock among customers – as in society as a whole.

"In the meantime, we can see that the bookings have only been postponed," says Daldrup.

Demand is currently increasing.

“For us, the announcement of higher pensions is more important than reports of higher inflation.

We are geared towards the best agers, so a pension increase is good for our business," says Daldrup in an interview with the FAZ. The biggest pension increase in decades is due for the summer: 5.35 percent more for seniors in the West, 6.12 percent in the eastern states.

"In any case, we can see from the incoming bookings that the citizens still have enough money in their travel budget for their holidays, despite generally rising prices," adds Daldrup.

Trendtours has set up additional tours for the Floriade. In July alone, coaches leave for the Netherlands somewhere in Germany on 20 days – usually several a day.

And if you want to go further or longer, you can drive to the "glittering world of the Côte d'Azur" including Monaco, to Silesia or to Tuscany.

At 54, Reisemanager Daldrup has not quite reached the age of his core target group.

In 2019, when he switched from Alltours to the company Trendtours, which is owned by two financial investors, he had to rethink his approach.

For air travel to the Mediterranean, it is no longer important whether a hotel has a water slide, but that an older audience feels comfortable.

He markets trips less via online holiday portals.

There is a weekly mailing for existing customers, which many receive in the mail.

He doesn't advertise with couples in their early 30s on the beach, but instead has people in their 50s portrayed.

He wins new customers through advertisements in the “Apotheken-Umschau”, among others.

However, best-ager travel is not a smiling topic, but a field of expansion.

"If you exclude pure cruise operators, we are already among the ten largest tour operators in Germany," says Daldrup.

In 2019, Trendtours had a turnover of around 320 million euros with 400,000 customers.

Then came the pandemic.