How the Netherlands engineered its asylum crisis — and turned it into a business

"We are currently not receiving guests,” reads a sign on a piece of paper at the entrance to the leafy driveway of the Fletcher Hotel in the Dutch municipality of Epe.

The hotel, surrounded by woodland and luxury villas, has been used as an emergency shelter for asylum seekers.

Due to a shortage of beds in regular asylum centres, an increasing number of emergency shelters have opened in recent years, in former schools, healthcare complexes, and hotels.

According to figures from the Netherlands' Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), in October 2025, almost half of the 70,000 asylum seekers and status holders in the Netherlands live in this kind of emergency accommodation. 

A bus shelter next to the entrance of the Fletcher Hotel has been converted into a smoking area. A few men sit there on old office chairs, looking somewhat bored. Inside the foyer, groups of people sit on red velvet armchairs embroidered with gold flowers.

Gone is the luxury the hotel once offered its guests.

With two people per room and 260 residents in total, there's virtually no privacy. The building's new function has left marks: the carpet is worn and dirty, and the white walls are covered in stains.  

The Dutch asylum system has been in crisis mode for years.

A transnational investigation initiated by Dutch investigative journalism collective Spit, together with Altreconomia in Italy, scrutinised the enormous amounts of public funds in Europe disappearing into asylum reception and detention.

Who benefits from the cash flow generated by the asylum crisis?

In the Netherlands, commercial companies such as hotel chains, holiday parks, and cruise ship rental companies are earning good money from this crisis. A thriving market has emerged, where substantial profits can be made from emergency solutions, while the quality of care is often substandard.

The reception crisis in the Netherlands is not caused by a particularly high influx of asylum seekers. This demographic has fluctuated around 55,000 per year since 2022, following a temporary dip between 2016 and 2021.

The crisis is caused by the closure of asylum reception centres.

The COA stated in 2019 that there was a shortage of 5,000 beds. Yet capacity was not increased. This did not cause problems for a while, because Covid-19 meant virtually no new asylum seekers were arriving.

When the influx returned to its previous level in 2021, an urgent and immediate shortage of beds for asylum seekers arose.

To stop asylum seekers from sleeping outside — a recurring scene at the Ter Apel registration centre — the COA scrambled for emergency solutions. Vacant offices, hotels, boats, sports and event halls, and tents were hastily converted into temporary shelters.

Four years after the opening of the first "temporary" emergency accommodation, they have become permanent. Residents are staying there for far too long. Due to cumbersome asylum procedures and a shortage of housing for refugees with residence permits, the mobility of refugees is minimal.

The COA is in a constant scramble to find new locations — a situation that fuels the perception that the Netherlands is being overrun by asylum seekers, providing easy ammunition for populist, anti-immigration rhetoric.

“The Netherlands is becoming one big asylum seekers’ centre”, said Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right populist party PVV.

Emergency accommodation is, on average, twice as expensive as regular reception centres.

These high costs are reflected in the COA's annual figures. While the influx of asylum seekers has not increased since 2022, reception costs have more than doubled in two years: from €1.6bn in 2022 to €3.6bn in 2024.

Housing asylum seekers is much more profitable than running a regular hotel

By the end of 2024, the COA rented nearly 10,000 hotel beds for the reception of refugees. Also hotel chain Fletcher currently runs multiple asylum-seeker locations.

A hotel room for an asylum seeker costs the COA an average of €250 per night, or €91,000 per year, while Fletcher advertises to regular hotel guests and tourists, with hotel stays for less than €50 per night.

Housing asylum seekers is thus much more profitable than running a regular hotel.

Dubious ‘middle men’ make asylum reception even more expensive.

Newspaper Financieele Dagblad unravelled how a single company, named LCHD, generated hundreds of millions in revenue by booking hotel rooms for refugees. LCHD acted as the exclusive intermediary for the COA, drawing up contracts with opaque margins and commissions.

Millions in profits

Over a period of two-and-a-half years, the company paid approximately €44m in profits to its owner René Derksen. Before Derksen tapped into the asylum market, he cut his teeth providing accommodation for labour migrants in the Netherlands.

By acting as an intermediary between the COA and the hotel chains, LCHD functioned as a “money machine that transferred all the risks to the other contracting parties, effectively being paid for nothing,” the FD quoted contract law expert Lisa Jie Sam Foek.

Meanwhile, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) has launched an investigation into Derksen's asylum deals.

The Public Prosecution Service has seized €50m worth of his assets, including real estate and expensive cars belonging to the businessman. The Public Prosecution Service states that the investigation into Derksen and other suspects for bribery is still ongoing. 

The COA has ended its collaboration with intermediaries and has opted to create a separate department focused on the use of hotels. The national asylum reception organisation would even prefer to stop doing this altogether.

“We want to advocate for a stable situation with sufficient regular capacity and structural funding”, a COA spokesperson said.

Derksen isn't the only one profiting. Numerous real estate developers are trying to cash in.

A Dutch training institute for the real estate industry promotes this course online: "Asylum reception as a business model in the Netherlands", noting that "the asylum crisis has created new market opportunities for commercial parties".

The newspaper AD previously uncovered that the COA was spending €110,000 a day to rent a cruise ship to house refugees and newspaper NRC revealed how savvy entrepreneurs profited from asylum housing on river ships by exploiting cheap migrant labour.

An investigation by Investico journalists revealed how commercial companies turned medical care in asylum centres into a profit model, supplying doctors and nurses at exorbitant rates. 

The fix for costly emergency shelters seems obvious: invest more in permanent accommodation. “But the political will to implement real solutions is lacking. That is the main cause of the situation we are in now”, said Myrthe Wijnkoop, head of lobby & policy at the NGO Vluchteligenwerk. “It creates a constant state of panic, which is completely unnecessary.”

According to the National Audit Office, the government underestimated asylum reception costs no fewer than 21 times over the past 23 years, resulting in unnecessarily high costs for emergency measures. 

In a very critical 2025 report, the independent Advisory Council on Migration [De Adviesraad Migratie], concluded that the Netherlands "maintains an unnecessarily expensive and vulnerable system that undermines government organisations". 

Pricey and messy - the Dutch policy

The Dutch government appears to be failing to learn from the current situation. While over €4bn has been budgeted for the COA in 2025, the 2025 national budget stipulates that this amount must be reduced to €617m by 2028. 

But costs are actually multiplying.

Emergency accommodation is on average twice as expensive as regular facilities; the total cost increase due to emergency accommodation is estimated at €1bn per year.

This money cannot be spent on the already severely-depleted basic services for asylum seekers and refugees.

"You can only spend one euro once. All that money you’re now unnecessarily spending on emergency reception centres cannot be used for anything else”, emphasises Myrthe Wijnkoop of Vluchtelingenwerk (a refugee NGO). This means refugees also pay the price for the messy Dutch policy.

'Nothing to do'

At the emergency reception centre in the Fletcher Hotel in Epe, there is no budget for unnecessary luxuries. A COA employee shows visitors around during an open day at the centre. A stuffy room has been converted into a gym. Old fitness benches are spread across the dark grey carpet.

“Residents spend a lot of their time here”, the employee explains. “There's not much else. Unfortunately, the emergency centres don’t have enough budget to organise activities for asylum seekers, unlike regular asylum centres.”

So there’s little else to do but hang around.

Outside,  Mohammed, a 27-year-old Syrian man, looks at the surrounding woodland. “It’s very quiet here”, he says. “We have nothing to do.”

In the restaurant of the Fletcher hotel in Epe, where guests normally dine, a long table is laden with homemade snacks.

They’re primarily for visitors attending the open day, but the residents themselves are also enjoying them.

“We’re not normally allowed to cook for ourselves”, says Mohammed from Syria. Meals are provided by the Fletcher staff. “Every day, potatoes or rice, without spices”, says Mohammed, pulling a face.

The lack of opportunities for self-catering is one of the criticisms contained in a 2023 research report by NGO Vluchtelingenwerk on the living conditions of refugees in Dutch reception centres.

For example, there is sometimes insufficient food for residents.

“It’s like children’s portions”, an adult man was quoted in the report. Dietary requirements are not taken into account, and children lose weight due to the poor quality of the meals or because they don’t like unfamiliar food.

Vluchtelingenwerk therefore concluded that the living conditions of refugees in Dutch reception centres are often seriously inadequate.

The list of shortcomings is long, not only regarding food, but also regarding hygiene, safety, and privacy.

A year earlier, the Dutch court had already ruled that Dutch reception centres do not meet European standards.

“Care for refugees has really fallen below the minimum level in recent years”, Wijnkoop said. “We cannot accept that we treat this very vulnerable group in this way.”

This story is part of a series of investigations conducted by Dutch investigative collective Spit and Italian publication Altreconomia into Europe's privatised migration market across six countries: Italy, Albania, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, and Greece.

This investigation was developed with the support of the EU Journalismfund.  

Every month, hundreds of thousands of people read the journalism and opinion published by EUobserver. With your support, millions of others will as well.

If you're not already, become a supporting member today.