Hospitality education in the Netherlands combines affordable cost and high quality of European education. The school is located in the city of Maastricht, which gained worldwide fame in 1991, when a historic event took place here - the signing of the treaty establishing the European Union. But long before that, the city was known as a center of impressive attractions, hospitality and high-class cuisine. Unsurprisingly, one of its most prominent educational institutions became the Hotel Management School, which enjoys a high reputation throughout the world. Like the city itself, it combines international hospitality with a European atmosphere and an innovative spirit.
The school's pride and its calling card are the successes of graduates who hold senior management positions in the hotel industry around the world - from the USA to Singapore, from Cuba to Spain, from China to South Africa and, of course, in the Netherlands itself. Hotel enterprises highly value Maastricht School graduates for their international orientation, cultural competence, independent thinking and command of foreign languages. But the alumni of this school have also been appreciated in other industries: the list of employers recruiting employees from among the school's students is headed by banks: customer orientation is nowadays no less important than knowledge in the fields of economics and finance.
Interns are in high demand
Maastricht Hotel Management School maintains close contacts with leading hotel chains, which assist the school in shaping the content and organization of educational programs. Representatives of companies such as Accor Group (Sofitel, Novotel), Hilton International, Marriott, Rezidor SAS or Disneyland Paris come to Maastricht to select students for internships or employment.
Speaking of practice. During their studies, students undergo internships twice: for five months they work in hotels or other companies at the executive level and another five months at the management level. Maastricht interns are awaited everywhere - in Europe, the USA, Caribbean countries, South Africa or China. The school handles all organizational work. Most students prefer to do one internship in distant countries - China, South Africa or the USA, and the second in Europe. This is because very often the second internship ends with employment.
Academic programs culminate in research projects. They are connected with real life - orders for them come from representatives of the industry. As a rule, future bachelors prepare projects for Dutch companies, and future masters - for larger international companies.
At the Maastricht Hotel Management School, 1,200 students from the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, South Africa, China, and Cuba simultaneously master the intricacies of the 'hospitable profession'. The school was established in 1950 and is a branch of Zuyd University, which has 12,000 students. The university includes several prestigious educational institutions located in different cities of the province of Limburg. These are the Business School, the Theater Academy, the Music Academy and the Academy of Fine Arts, as well as the School of Communications and Multimedia Design. The Hotel Management School occupies a beautiful extensive territory of 22 acres, spread around the medieval castle of Bethlehem. It has 26 lecture halls and classrooms, 12 well-equipped project rooms, 2 restaurants Four Seasons and L'Etoile de Bethlehem, a residence with 259 rooms for first-year students, a modern library whose collection also includes the best e-books, a learning center with Internet access and a reading room, and excellent opportunities for golf.
The school is a laureate of a number of international awards for innovations in education. Students undergo training in the form of interdisciplinary practical classes (case-studies). They learn to simultaneously use their knowledge of economic theory and, for example, law or personnel management, as is needed in real life. This approach develops independence and creative thinking. The main focus is on managerial skills. To understand the nature and character of work processes in the hotel industry, bachelor students also acquire practical skills, but only 25% of the total time is allocated to this. Future masters, however, work and study only 'at the management level'.
MBA - a career accelerator
Along with the bachelor's and master's programs, the Hotel Management School offers a one-year MBA program in hotel and tourism management, designed for experienced professionals preparing themselves for senior management positions. The intensive program includes general management and specialized subjects related to hotel business management. It culminates in a consultancy-research project carried out for large international companies - such as Accor, Hilton or Marriott.
The MBA program attracts both hotel managers and specialists from other fields, such as finance or information technology. The advantages of obtaining such an education are obvious: the hotel business has no national borders, the tourism sector is growing in most countries, and working with people seems creative and interesting to many.
Another original and in-demand program, “Master of International Hospitality Management”, is offered jointly with the Spanish school ESADE-St Ignasi, which ranks third in the Wall Street Journal newspaper ranking. The program includes 4 months of study in Barcelona, 4 months in Maastricht, and a 5-month internship. The program is aimed at innovative, cross-cultural management and the development of managerial skills among young specialists.
In conclusion, it remains to add that the Netherlands - the land of tulips - is a wonderful place to study. There is plenty to see here - for example, to get acquainted with the traditional rural architecture of Holland at the open-air museum Openluchtmuseum. On a small area, authentic farmhouses and windmills are gathered, without which the Dutch landscape is unthinkable. And Maastricht itself is a small, cozy city in the south of the country, where many speak English, German, and even French. Thanks to the presence of two universities, a pleasant student atmosphere reigns here. And if you wish, you can head to Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, or Paris: they are, as they say, within easy reach.