Accurate and sufficiently detailed information about recreation-related use of dune areas is necessary for their management. Long-term monitoring can provide this information. This paper presents the visitor counting programme used in the Meijendel dune area since 1992. The data collected during the first ten years are used to evaluate the method. The combination of mechanical vehicle counts and additional visual counts proved to be reliable and produced an accurate data set. Costs could be reduced through eventually reducing the number of counting locations and limiting the number of visual counts.