Joining the Hospitality Excellence Programme part 2

It's now time for our Stenden students to host the HEP second session in Leeuwarden. The 2 day programme was full of excitement. Yes, it is about a project, but a fun party was also part of it :)

Stenden was HEPpening!

How do you feel when you are about to find out your test results? And how do you feel about a Maldives trip that you have booked last year is going to be tomorrow? Perhaps, you might be super excited, a little bit anxious or you cannot even sleep properly because you think too much. Well, that probably describes how I felt before that “moment of truth” finally came! Continuing on my previous writing, it was all about the second session of Hospitality Excellence Programme (HEP) 2015 where Stenden Leeuwarden was this time’s host! This year, we got the privilege of hosting a 2-day session instead on 13-14 March 2015. Indeed, it was a mixed feeling whether my colleagues would love the city, the stay, the food and many more.

Hestia party with excellent people

Spread over an intensive, 2-day session with an overnight stay at our lovely Stenden Hotel, I would proudly say that Stenden owned it! Together with the other Stenden representatives, we were given an honour to organise a night activity for our buddies from the other hotel schools. As part of the preparation, we even had a meeting to discuss, in which we decided to have a gathering at Hestia Student Lounge. For your information, as part of Stenden’s facilities of 1-2 minutes walk from the main building; Hestia (“a home away from home”) is a perfect place for students to have a group meeting, potluck dinner or house party! Overall, this small bonding night gave us the opportunity to get to know each other better as well as to refresh our overloaded brain from an intensive programme of the day.

Enough said about the small party and let’s get back to the real deal of the programme. Day 1 started with a gentle smile and cordial hug welcoming both students and professors to the capital of Friesland, Leeuwarden accompanied by morning coffee and tea. Carried out in Grand Hotel Post Plaza, Day 1 programme went smoothly with interviews with 2 of every team’s target groups as the highlights of the day. As we started with the implementation of design-thinking method, we put the first step of the method called “Empathise” into practice.

Grand Hotel Post Plaza Leeuwarden

For my team, I invited two of Stenden students who own hospitality-related businesses in Leeuwarden, one being the owner of a coffee bar (Barrevoets) and the other being the owner of a shisha/tapas bar (Leeuwarden Lounge). They are really nice places to chill and spend your spare time while you are in Leeuwarden by the way. Since my team’s target groups are young entrepreneurs, we gained a lot of insights into how they create and deliver value to their customers as part of the contributing factor towards hospitality in cities. By empathising with your interviewees, you touched their deepest personal dreams, aspirations, worries, thoughts and passions that can be related to the topic of how they manage their businesses to survive. Those aspects reflected the actions they took or the decisions they made to create value and experience for customers. All in all, it was really interesting to have a completely different approach of interview, which you can have a better understanding of people as well.

Even though Stenden representatives did not get an overnight stay as well at Stenden Hotel, we woke up with full enthusiasm to embrace Day 2 of the programme where this time it was fully conducted at Stenden. After a typical Friesland’s breakfast, Mr Albert Boswijk gave us an interactive lecture concerning “Economy of Experiences”, which again relevant to our project as well. Afterwards, we were split again into team sessions, where we discussed our findings based on the interviews.

These interviews were merely practice to create a framework for the project. Throughout the discussion, we were also exposed to the second step of the method called “Define” by creating personas and guest journeys of the target groups. These two were the representation of a typical person’s characteristics that belongs to a certain customer group. As suggested by the name of the method – design-thinking method – yes, I learnt how to draw and illustrate things as well. Besides the team’s professors, my team was also guided by a Master student from Delhi who already had experiences in using the method at Delft University of Technology. To wrap it up, we came into a consensus of the research plan that we could bring up in the next session. To sum up, Day 2 was filled by enriching, eye-opener sessions that were wrapped up with farewell snacks and drinks at the Bar of Stenden Hotel before everyone’s departure back to their home schools.

Everything might sound so heavy in terms of content and workload for you, but believe me; all the lectures, workshops and team sessions provided were very fun and interactive. I bet the professors also learnt a lot from them too! Speaking of next session, it will be held in NHTV University of Applied Sciences Breda. Besides another long journey from up north, I really hope that there will be another interesting, new thing to be obtained as well! To conclude, while Stenden was already HEPpening, Breda, you are next! 

Joining the Hospitality Excellence Programme part 1

Two students of Stenden University Bali were selected as representatives of Stenden at the Hospitality Excellence Programme 2015. The proud students, Joshua and Gaby  are working together with other students from 4 reputable hotel schools to create a research paper in hospitality. Here is just the first article about their contribution to the programme. Check it out! 

It’s HEPpy Time!

Feel honoured to join the HEP

As quoted by a famous American football player/coach, Vince Lombardi (n.d.), “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” This quote has inspired me to apply for Hospitality Excellence Programme 2015, or HEP in short. Initially commenced in 2013, HEP is a co-creation between the Association of Dutch Hotel Management Schools with Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN) or Dutch Association for Hospitality Entrepreneurs. 

Fellow HEP representative students 

In other words, this is also a collaborative networking programme where 5 ambitious students from 5 different, reputable Dutch hotel schools work in teams, dealing with a real-life, wicked problems within the hospitality industry.

It is of my great honour and enthusiasm that I was selected as one of the 5 students who represent Stenden University along with another Stenden University Bali (SUB) student, Gaby. The selection process involved the screening of CV and motivation letter as well as an interview with two Stenden’s best professors, Mrs. Elena Cavagnaro and Mr. Sjoerd Gehrels. 

We are so proud not only because we were chosen for this prestigious programme, but also because we are capable of representing SUB as well. This means that SUB has high academic standards that give us added value compared with the regular students in Leeuwarden.  #BeProud

New knowledge gained, new friends made!

Continuing Stenden’s legacy from past experiences, Stenden is, again, the only university represented by international students, while the other hotel schools are mostly Dutch. This year, Stenden send 2 Germans – whom one of them recently won the European Mise en Place Cup 2015 (http://emcup.eu/), 1 Honduran/Swedish and not to forget Gaby and I from Indonesia. Interestingly, this has always been Stenden’s value where all international students get equal opportunity to attend various events and programmes offered. It is, in fact, unity in diversity!

Networking lunch

So far, I have attended the first introductory session hosted by Saxion University in Apeldoorn on Friday, 13 February. 2 hours away by car from Leeuwarden, the journey was truly worthy as I have learnt a lot of new, interesting things such as the design thinking method. Besides, I have also met my fellow (future) young hoteliers and professors from the different schools in which we share about how the education differs amongst the schools. As the only guy in the team, I feel so privileged working with friendly and intelligent ladies from Hotelschool The Hague, Saxion University, NHTV Breda and Hotelschool Maastricht respectively. 

In the next four monthly sessions, my team will mostly research on the future of hospitality industry in cities under the supervision of Dr Karoline Wiegerink from Hotelschool The Hague and Dr Albert Postma from Stenden University. At the end of the day, the final product of this programme will be a research paper as well as a presentation, which adds value to the hospitality industry. Overall, new knowledge gained, new friends made!

Student giving presentation at HEP

At last but surely not least, we as Stenden representatives are looking forward for the upcoming session on Thursday, 12 March and Friday, 13 March, which we will host it this time! With an overnight stay in our beloved Stenden Hotel, I am so excited to welcome these people and show the arts of hospitality in Leeuwarden, which might include party as well J. All in all, it was, is and going to be a HEPpy time!

For further information:

KHN Official Website: http://www.khn.nl/home

Association of Dutch Hotel Management School Official Website: http://www.dutchhotelmanagementschools.nl/home

My Stenden Journey of a Thousand Miles - by Wadzanayi Chitambo (part 5)

 

This time Wadzi tells us about her first ever 'White Christmas', exploring Eastern Europe and having her first snow experience!

At last the long awaited white Christmas...

All my life I dreamt of a white Christmas just like any other kid out there would, and finally now that I was in Europe for the festive holidays I had the chance to experience it. There really is a distinct difference of one’s Christmas spirit when living in warm climatic conditions in December when compared to those in cold climatic conditions. I suppose a white Christmas is just a norm which has been imbedded into our heads by the society and other influential things such as television. Without further ado, I will let you walk down memory lane with my to Christmas holiday of 2014.

Traditional European advent's drink

It was all well planned by my dear friend András from the time we were still in Bali, we spoke about spending Christmas in Szombathely, Hungary with his folks. This has to have been the best excursions of my life, with my feet touching the ground in 6 European countries in a space of 2 weeks. During the course of the trip we drove through Germany, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and lastly Poland being the final stop whereby we would commence the New Year.

On the first night of our journey we stopped over in a small town in Germany for the night and to get into the Christmas mood, we went to the Christmas market in the village. This was something I had not experienced before, families wondering around outdoors having a jolly good time, with a live orchestra staged to sing Christmas carols and anyone was welcome to join in the carolling. 

Christmas lights at the German market

There were stalls selling all kinds of antiques, decorations, and most importantly foodJ. From the famous German currywurst, to Finnish cuisine to even Chinese noodles. Hot beverages were also on sale to keep everyone warm as it was still a cold winter night, with the likes of hot chocolate, tea, coffee, mulled wine and hot beer, yes! HOT BEER! That also took me by surprise, never had I thought such a thing existed. The ambiance in this place was astounding, from the sound of the violins and trumpets, the Christmas lights and decorations on the olden day German architecture, the smell of all the delicious food, children running around and the sound of families coming together and having a splendid time.

Thereafter we headed back to the hotel to rest and were off early in the morning as we still had a long journey ahead of us. After a couple hours of driving we finally reached Hungary and were in András’ hometown. It truly is a nice feeling to see where your friend grew up. After long awaited rest and seeing as Szombathely is located alongside the Austrian/Hungarian border, we drove to Vienna the next day for some final gift shopping.

Ready to explore Vienna's Christmas market

Sunset in Vienna

Vienna is a beautiful and very clean city, the architecture again was beautiful and the shopping street with all the crème de la crème brands you can think of. There was of course a Christmas market in Vienna as well, and this was much fancier than the previous with very extravagant decorations and lights. It was great to try the famous Wiener schnitzel in one of Vienna’s fine dining restaurants as well as some Vienna sausage. It really is mind-blowing how you can grow up eating something then finally get the chance to eat an original version of it from the place it originates from. With that being said I was then on a quest to try or the famous traditional meals in the places we visited, meals such as the famous Hungarian Goulash, Polish dumplings and the likes.

After all the Christmas shopping was done, then came Christmas itself. Nothing more heart-warming than being surrounded by loved ones on such a special day, although I was not with my family, it really did feel like family regardless of the DNA, A home away from home I would like to call it. A big feast was made with wrapped Christmas presents around the tree. Almost started to believe in Santa again. Being surrounded by people from all different nations, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Hungary, and Poland, this way getting to know how one holiday can be celebrated differently in other parts of the world. It truly was a moving experience.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Gifts galore

It didn’t snow on the 25^th, so I was feeling sad that I wouldn’t get to experience snow. However on the 26^th the tables turned and it began to snow. It was a dream come true, it felt like a Christmas miracle. When we noticed it had begun to snow I quickly ran outside with so much excitement. And all I found myself saying was WOW, WOW, and WOW! It was absolutely sublime, I had the biggest grin on my face as it was my very first time seeing snow. To my surprise I found myself crying tears of joy, most definitely the best and most cherishable moment. As the other people I was with had experienced snow before they were amused by my reaction. We then began to play in the snow, throwing snowballs at each other, I really felt like a kid again. This is an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life. 

Enjoying Christmas

My first snow!!

Snowballing at night

The Danube river

The best of Hungarian spa

In the following days we did some sight-seeing in Budapest, walking through the royal palace, fisherman’s bastille, crossing the Danube. We found that in Hungary most of the towns have hot thermal water, and this is a big trend in Hungary after having 150 years of Turkish occupation to take advantage of these thermal baths for body treatment purposes. With that being said we visited the Szechenyi spa one of the most famous spa’s for body treatment purposes.

                                                                  

After Christmas was over we continued the journey to Poland and visited a town called Wroclaw – the city of a hundred bridges which is a town with a lot of German influence in terms of German architecture. Thereafter we moved on to Warsaw the capital whereby we spent our New Years. It was of opinion that a very small portion of the old town city survived, and the remaining being metropolitan. This making it one of most modern European city with an enormous amount of skyscrapers. It’s been really interesting to see that part of Europe and being able to distinguish differences between the several European countries. This has just been an insight of the many opportunities I have been granted by going to Stenden. The ability to have a multicultural lifestyle, study as well as see the world. So go ahead, embark on this journey and also begin walking through your Stenden journey of a thousand miles.

Budapest by night

Photo credit to Andras Szemes, follow him on Instagram (@szemesa) for more beautiful pictures of our journey.

Downtown Warsaw

A charming Polish café

The mandatory road trip selfie

My Stenden Journey of a Thousand Miles - by Wadzanayi Chitambo (part 4)

Studying in the heart of Europe, in the student town of Leeuwarden in the Netherlands, gives our blogger Wadzi many opportunities to discover more of Europe. In this blog she describes her trip to Paris, accompanied by her fellow 'Bali' students. Mile by mile eventually all European roads lead to Paris....

All European roads lead to Paris

There is an expression that you can not say you have been to Europe without having visited Paris. That seems like a cliché, but like many others I had always dreamt of going to Paris. It arguably is one of the most famous and monumental cities in the world. Lucky for me, I am so blessed to have my beloved friends Shantika and Andras, who took the courtesy of making this dream come true by surprising me with a trip to Paris on my 20th birthday. The ability to travel freely in and out most of the countries in the European Union also happens to be one of the many perks of having a Schengen visa.

Casual blending at Notre Dame

The great thing about studying in a first world country is that there is an abundance of modes of transport one can make use of, for instance train, car, bus and plane. With that being said we found it to be most feasible to travel by car, plus it would make an awesome road trip. To be honest, I actually had no clue what this journey had in store for me or where exactly we were headed. I had just been instructed to pack my bags for the weekend and was told that we were going on an adventure. So it almost felt like a kidnap, but the good kind, if there is such a thing. It took me by surprise to finally arrive in Paris and could not believe that I was really there in flesh. Words alone can not explain the feeling of excitement and how overwhelmed I was at this moment and time. It really did feel like a dream come true.

Eiffel Tower. Beautiful by day, beautiful by night

As a perfect way to start off our little excursion, we took a visit to the Eiffel Tower right after having arrived. It was just as beautiful as I had imagined, but much more elevated, as if it would scrape the stars in the sky! It looked as though it was made of a tonne steel laces. It is an unwritten rule that one must visit the Eiffel Tower should they ever find themselves in Paris. I myself can relate to this, as it is one of the monuments in the world that should be at the top of your to-do-list and /or bucket list.

French architecture at its best

The school timetable and workload from Stenden is not so hectic. It still gives you a little bit of room to squeeze in some leisure activities as a way to loosen up and get some time off from the books and enjoy. That way you can make the most of your university life. A wise man once told me that there is no point of studying in Europe if you are not going to explore it whilst you are there. Which is indeed a valid point as it also becomes part of the World of Opportunities that Stenden offers. What better way but to study and explore the world at the same time. Such exposure will also be of great use in the future, as a person who has seen more of the world is most likely to be familiar with working and adapting to all sorts of different cultures and backgrounds. Being culturally intelligent is a quality that is increasingly becoming a necessity in today’s hospitality industry.

Some say the grass always looks greener on the other side and it certainly did look great in Paris, if I do say so myself. The architecture alone was mind-blowing, all the inscriptions and carvings on the buildings show the artistic culture of the city. The weather was also great, as the colours of autumn were starting to show on the trees, with some of the autumn leaves already falling. This makes the walk down to the Arc de Triomphe even more enjoyable. It was like brands galore walking down Champs-Élysées, a street full of all the brands one can imagine. This would make a perfect illustration of a shopaholics  heaven.

It is such an extraordinary feeling to be able to witness and explore these national monuments that you once learned about in history classes, read about in novels or seen on television. It was as though history was being awakened, being able to walk through the Louvre museum, which happens to be one of the world’s largest museums. The Louvre is situated in Paris’ first district and exhibits nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century. It is also famous for being the home to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, as well as for being the humble abode of King Louis XIV. It was such a great opportunity to visit this monument and to thereafter enjoying a picnic in the Louvre Palace’s garden.

This trip to Paris was just a glimpse of Europe and I honestly cannot wait to travel more around Europe and explore all the other monuments out there. That experience will most certainly be shared in the upcoming blogs, as a tribute to my Stenden journey of a thousand miles. Till then…

Photo Credit to Andras Szemes, follow him on Instagram (@szemesa) for more stunning pictures like these.

Raspberry selfies on the road.