With the 2012 Holland Festival due to start at the beginning of June groups booking a stag party to a European destination this summer are being urged to consider a trip to Amsterdam, say pre-nuptial event organisers The Stag Company today.

The event is the largest annual celebration of performing arts in The Netherlands with music, dance and theatre all strongly represented. It will be expanding this year to include visual arts and multimedia as well.

“Many of our groups want to do something a little different and the Holland Festival provides an ideal opportunity for that,” says Stag Company CEO Rob Hill.

Traditionally that would, according to the organisation, involve an activity such as firing assault rifles in a far flung Eastern European destination. But with the announcement of details of the Holland Festival, a major cultural event that will be dominating the month of June throughout The Netherlands, The Stag Company are seeking to further promote their most popular European stag weekend destination.

“We send about 500 groups on an Amsterdam stag do every summer, so the fact that we can now tell them about something really culturally relevant and unique happening in the city when they book with us is great,”” explains Hill.

Pop group Antony and the Johnsons are sure to be a big pull, playing a one-off concert with the Metropole Orchestra, whilst an opera inspired by the works of Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe is also likely to be popular.

Whilst opera and folk music might not appear to be the first choice of stag parties more closely associated with cheap drinks, lap dancing clubs and days on a paintballing course, Hill is confident that the party atmosphere generated by the festival will be appealing to his clients.

Of course a stag group’s main priority is where to find a plentiful supply of beer, but people have been responding very enthusiastically to news of this festival.

The Stag Company are headquarted in Brighton.