Roadside assistance services lie at the heart of many clubs’ business models and yesterday conference hosts the ANWB gave delegates the chance to look behind the scenes at its emergency and technical centres to see how the club handles more than 2.3 million calls per year.

At the Emergency Centre, located at the ANWB’s headquarters in The Hague, delegates were guided through the operation’s nerve centre by Eric Grootmeijer, Network Manager, ANWB assistance and Area Manager ARC Europe.

He explained that while the total area of Holland may be small, just 37,000 square kilometres, the size of the country means that Dutch motorists are highly mobile throughout Europe and as such the ANWB has a network of international assistance offices in cities such as Athens, Lyon, Munich and Barcelona. He revealed that the club now handles some 80,000 assistance cases annually.

Closer to home, of the 2.3 million calls received by the centre’s 350 staff, 1.2 million are domestic road assistance cases. In the realm of medical assistance, Grootmeijer informed delegates that it receives 250,000 calls per year and deals with a 30,000 cases.

Delegates were also taken inside the club’s technical centre, where they were given detailed explanations of the complete range of services offered by the club and shown the range of vehicles at the club’s disposal, stretching all the way back to its origins 130 years ago.