Amsterdam Hospitality sector pleased with arrival of Hotel Management School Leeuwarden. 

Last Thursday, Hotel Arena hosted the launch of the Work & Study Associate Degree programme to be offered by Hotel Management School NHL Stenden in Amsterdam from September 2025. Some 50 key figures from the hospitality sector discussed the future of education with each other. 

'Several hotels and hospitality companies in Amsterdam have long expressed a need for a training programme tailored to the talent working for them'. Says Marco ten Hoor, director Hotel Management School Leeuwarden. 'Work & Study is studying at hbo level without having to stop working in the process, and thus we are meeting a great demand from the hospitality sector. In addition, the Associate Degree (a 2-year hbo programme) fits well with the demand from employees'. 

Working talent can develop itself in this way, while the employer plays an important role during the learning process. And it is precisely on this collaboration with the hospitality sector that HMS Leeuwarden has been strongly committed for a number of years. 'It is crucial for education to merge more with the industry it trains for. It is no longer: the education is a stand-alone world and then the student enters the working world. Instead, the working world is involved in the student's learning process from day one. And in the Work & Study programme, this is continuously brought together: everything students learn during teaching days is immediately applied in practice. This is how we work closely together to develop talent in the industry.' 

The hospitality sector also seems enthusiastic about this new form of cooperation;' I am very happy to see how education and practice are increasingly moving towards each other. It is very important that we as a sector support this and play our part in it, and that is exactly why the Hospitality Pact was established: to strengthen the cooperation between education and business. The Work & Study programme is an excellent example of this' says Erwin van der Graaf , chairman of the Hospitality Pact. 

The responsibility of good and quality education no longer seems to lie solely with training with a good curriculum and qualified teaching staff. It is a joint responsibility between industry and education to get the right talents in the right place and keep them there.