From 17 to 19 November 2026, booth 348, the recreation sector comes together in Hardenberg for the 24th edition of Recreatie Vakbeurs. This year, AI and technology are explicitly on the agenda, alongside rising costs and the VAT increase, legislation, guest experience and sustainability.
That makes it a good place to look at what AI could mean for your operation. It's also a good place to ask harder questions.
Don't ask what AI knows. Ask what AI agents can do for holiday parks.
There is no shortage of AI that can answer questions. Give it a database, put a chat interface in front of it and you have an impressive demo.
But running a holiday park, campsite or rental business requires more than getting an answer. A useful AI assistant needs to understand who is asking, what they are allowed to do and what needs to happen next.
So when someone shows you their latest AI solution in Hardenberg, ask two questions.
What can it see?
AI doesn't remove the need for access control. Quite the opposite.
An assistant that can access everything in your system needs to know what each employee can see. Otherwise, making information easier to access can also make the wrong information easier to access.
Max, our AI agent, works with the permissions already configured in Maxxton. A front-office colleague needs different assistance than a park manager.
What can it actually do?
The second question is even more important. If the answer to every question is a paragraph of text, you haven't necessarily saved anyone any work.
Max can work inside Maxxton. It can create a reservation, apply a change, summarise what needs attention today, explain how to complete something in the system and recommend an appropriate add-on.
That is the difference between AI that talks about your operation and AI that helps run it.
Look beyond conversational AI, too
AI may be one of the biggest themes at this year's fair, but it isn't the only technology that can make a measurable difference to a recreation business.
Plenty of operational decisions can benefit from better software.
Fill the gaps in your planning.
Maxxton's Smart Reallocation Engine continuously looks for ways to reshuffle existing reservations and fill gaps in the planboard. That can turn a request that would otherwise be impossible into a booking, without someone manually rebuilding the planning.
Automatically adjust prices to demand.
Dynamic pricing adjusts rates as demand changes, using historical patterns and measured price elasticity rather than relying on a rate plan that is set once and corrected later. With the VAT increase adding another variable to pricing decisions, having the right data behind those decisions matters even more.
Recommend the add-ons most relevant to each guest.
Add-on recommendations use previous booking behaviour, travel party, and booking days to suggest extras relevant to the guest, rather than simply displaying the same list to everyone.
None of these is particularly interesting because it uses AI. They are interesting because they can change what your team can get done.
Use the fair to test the technology
For its 2026 edition, Recreatie Vakbeurs brings together more than 360 exhibitors across 15 themes, with thousands of recreation professionals visiting over three days. The organisers themselves recommend planning your visit in advance and using the programme and exhibitor information to decide whom you want to meet.
Our suggestion: don't just bring a list of suppliers.
Bring a problem.
Bring the booking that your current system couldn't accommodate. The gap in your planboard that nobody has time to fill. The pricing decision your team keeps making manually. The question your front-office colleagues ask every week. The process that still requires someone to consult a manual.
Then ask the people on the other side of the stand to solve it. That's a much better AI demo. Book a meeting or drop by the Maxxton stand during the fair.
