Holland Shore Days exists to help cruise passengers make the most of one day ashore in Rotterdam, Amsterdam or IJmuiden. We are a small independent team based in the Netherlands, and we write these guides because a shore day is short, the information is scattered, and getting it wrong costs somebody their only day in a city.
Why we say that first
Some of the links on this site earn us a commission. We would rather tell you exactly how that works than bury it, so this page covers both our affiliate disclosure and how we handle your data.
What this site is not is a page farm built around booking links. The test we apply to everything we publish is whether it answers a question a cruise passenger actually has, and most of what we publish earns nothing at all:
- Our ship schedules for all three ports — the most-used pages on the site — carry no commercial links whatsoever.
- So do the FAQ pages, the port hubs and most of the practical transport writing.
- Where the best answer is free — a walk into the centre instead of an excursion, a public bus instead of a transfer — we say so, and we say it first.
- We publish walking times and journey times as the operators state them, not as the optimistic version that sells a taxi.
In 2026 we dropped one booking partner entirely rather than keep links that were not doing anything useful for readers. That is the standard we are trying to hold ourselves to.
Affiliate disclosure
Holland Shore Days participates in affiliate programmes with Tiqets, GetYourGuide and Booking.com. If you follow one of our links and book something, we may receive a commission from that company.
- You never pay more. The price is the same whether you use our link or go to the partner directly. The commission comes out of the partner’s margin, not your ticket.
- We are not paid for placement or for opinions. Nobody can buy a mention, a ranking or a good word on this site. We have no sponsored posts.
- We link to the actual product — the specific ticket or tour we are talking about — rather than dropping you on a search page. If we cannot find a product that genuinely fits, we leave the link out.
- Commercial links are marked in the page code as sponsored links, which is what search engines and screen readers use to identify them, and they open in a new tab.
- We are not the seller. When you book, your contract is with the ticket provider or tour operator, not with us. Prices, availability, opening hours and cancellation terms are theirs, and they change — always check on their page before you pay.
If you would rather not use an affiliate link, that is completely fine: search for the attraction directly, or book at the door where that is still possible. We will keep telling you when it is not.
Privacy: the short version
We do not ask you for anything. This site has no accounts, no newsletter, no contact form and no comment section. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing for us to sell — we do not sell or share personal data with anyone, and we never will.
What does happen automatically is ordinary web-visit measurement, plus a few things loaded from other companies to make pages work. Below is the whole list.
What is collected, and by whom
Server logs
Like every website, ours runs on a hosting provider’s servers, which keep standard access logs: your IP address, the page requested, the time, and your browser and operating system. These are used to keep the site running and to investigate errors and abuse. We do not use them to build a profile of you.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to see which guides people read, which ports they arrive from, and where pages fail them. It tells us that a page was read; it does not tell us who you are. It sets cookies in your browser (named _ga and _ga_ followed by a property code) which distinguish one visitor from another and expire after two years.
This is the one piece of measurement we run, and we run it because without it we are guessing about what to write next. If you would rather not be counted, you can install Google’s official opt-out add-on, block cookies for this site in your browser settings, or use your browser’s private mode. Nothing on this site stops working if you do.
We also use Google Search Console, which reports on search terms and rankings in aggregate. It does not identify individual visitors and does not place anything in your browser.
Things loaded from other companies
When a page here loads, your browser also contacts these third parties. That means they receive your IP address and basic browser information, because that is how the web works — a request has to come from somewhere.
| Who | What it is doing |
|---|---|
| Google (Fonts) | Serving the typefaces the site is set in |
| Google (Analytics) | The visit measurement described above |
| Tiqets | The ticket widget shown in the sidebar |
We do not run advertising, retargeting pixels, social media trackers, heatmaps or session recording. There is no Meta pixel, no TikTok pixel, no advertising network and no ad code of any kind on this site.
When you click a booking link
Following an affiliate link takes you to Tiqets, GetYourGuide or Booking.com. Those companies record that you arrived from us — normally by setting a cookie on their own site — so that a booking can be attributed. From that click onward you are on their site and their privacy policy applies, not ours. We receive only anonymous, aggregated reporting: how many clicks and how many bookings. We never see your name, your email address, your payment details or what you booked.
If you email us
Email is the only way to reach us, and if you write to us we keep the correspondence so we can answer you and follow up. We use it for that and nothing else — no marketing list, no sharing with third parties. Ask us to delete it and we will.
Cookies in plain terms
We do not set any cookies of our own. The only cookies placed when you read a guide here are the Google Analytics ones described above, which are set when the page loads. You can refuse or delete them at any time through your browser settings or the opt-out add-on, and the site will work exactly as before.
Partner websites may set their own cookies once you click through to them. Those are governed by their policies: Tiqets, GetYourGuide, Booking.com and Google.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask us what personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, object to how we use it, or ask for a copy. Given how little this site collects, the honest answer for most readers is that we hold nothing that identifies you — but ask, and we will check properly and tell you.
Write to info@hollandshoredays.com. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you have the right to complain to the Dutch data protection authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.
Children
This site is written for people planning a shore day and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
Changes to this page
If we add a partner, add a tool that collects something, or change how any of this works, we will update this page and change the date below. We will not quietly add tracking and leave this page saying otherwise.
Last updated: 29 August 2026.
Contact
Holland Shore Days — independent shore day guides for Rotterdam, Amsterdam and IJmuiden.
Questions about this page, a correction to a guide, or a data request: info@hollandshoredays.com.
Found something on this site that is out of date or wrong? Please tell us. Corrections are the part of this work we take most seriously.