Tourism and Hospitality

One of the first higher education institutions that found its way to NIHA was CHN-Leeuwarden (currently Stenden University), for whom NIHA performed a small feasibility study. This study answered the questions (1) whether the founding of a CHN campus in Turkey on the area of tourism and hotel management would be feasible and (2) what region would be best suited for such a campus. NIHA advised Cappadocia as the preferred region. However, because Turkey did not fit CHN’s strategic plan after all, the plan was temporarily put on hold.
 
During the preparation of, and discussions during, the NIHA conference of 13-16 January 2008 in Kızılcahamam, the plans were revised.

Since then, the new project is quickly taking shape (both content-wise and logistically), due to the efforts of amongst others the Dutch and Turkish Ministries of Education, the EVD (the Agency for International Business and Cooperation), Kenwerk (the Dutch knowledge centre for the sectors of hospitality, tourism and recreation and bakery), Colo (the association of Centres of Expertise) and the MBO-raad (the Netherlands Association of VET Colleges).

With this project, NIHA hopes to strengthen in particular the cooperation between the Netherlands and Turkey in the field of vocational education and internships. In response to an invitation by the EVD, we submitted a project proposal entitled ‘Tourism and Hospitality in Cappadocia’ in the framework of the MATRA-Flex programme on 21 April 2008. This proposal was approved and the first Dutch delegation visited Cappadocia and Ankara and its surroundings between 10 and 20 May 2009 (see the report ‘inception visit’).

Images of the inception visit to Cappadocia, Ankara and Kızılcahamam

Between 24 and 28 June, eight representatives from Turkish institutions, universities of applied sciences and vocational schools visited the Netherlands – headed by Mehmet Afşaroğulları of the Turkish Ministry of National Education. Click here for the report of this visit.

A final extensive visit from a Dutch delegation to Turkey was realised in October 2008. This time around, representatives from the sector also took part in the visit (from Turkey: TÜROFED and TURSAB; from the Netherlands: Koninklijke Horeca Nederland). Click here for the report of this visit.

During the largest Dutch trade mission to Turkey to date, for which NIHA organised the education programme, State Secretary Marja van Bijsterveldt was offered a protocol that had already been signed by twenty institutions during and after a special ‘tourism and hospitality’ seminar in the practice hotel of the İMKB-AOTML in Çankaya, Ankara.

Several cooperative efforts have resulted from this protocol (exchange of students, interns and knowledge, and initiatives on joint programmes), in which vocational schools and several universities of applied sciences from the Netherlands and Turkey take part.

A final report of the project has been submitted to the EVD.
See:
Main text final report
 

In 2009, NIHA hopes that it can carry out a comparable project in the area of health care and elderly care in the framework of MATRA. The ‘diet kitchen’ and ‘thermal tourism’ connect this new initiative to the tourism and hospitality project.

NIHA attempts to stay abreast of other Turkish-Dutch initiative in the field of tourism and hospitality, and support them where necessary. One could think of the ‘train the trainers’ project of the Mondriaan College together with the İSMEK training institute in Istanbul. The aim of this project is to eventually train a sufficient number of hosts for Istanbul’s turn as the ‘European Capital of Culture’ in 2011. The project is one of the many results of the Dutch trade mission in the autumn of 2007, headed by the then mayor of The Hague, Wim Deetman.

Also outside of the MATRA project, NIHA spends much attention to create a broad platform for future infrastructure for internship-exchange in the field of tourism and hospitality. So far, there are two concrete results: during the NIHA conference in January 2008, NIHA and the Turkish Ministry for Culture and Tourism signed an internship agreement on placing interns in museums and tourist information offices in all of Turkey; additionally, an umbrella agreement between NIHA and the Turkish Ministry for National Education on placing vocational education interns in the field of hospitality throughout Turkey has been signed. We are currently also working on an agreement that would allow the use of the facilities of practice hotels throughout Turkey at a reduced tariff.