If you hate theory and want to study a tourism program that uses a practical approach, then this study from NHL Stenden is for you.
The approach of a practical tourism study program is great. Yet, the program itself may also still need a little more practice. As a student in the “guinea pig” year of tourism management, I have studied in both approaches: the Problem Based Learning and the Designed Based Education approach. With the change from one to the other system, you could tell the tutors were as clueless as the students regarding how to teach the right content. Depending on the tutor’s motivation, you either received a lot of help and insights or you would have more questions than answers. Yet, I believe the longer the DBE system is in use, the better the study program will be.
Besides this, I love my study program and the university. The university itself is very open, inclusive and international. The tourism management course gives a great insight into the tourism industry and sustainability and helps you become a tourism professional. I especially love working in groups together on real-life projects. We work together with DMOs, NGOs and other tourism organisations. Yet, I would have wished for some more known and perhaps international organisations since it is a tourism program. Nevertheless, the internationalism of the course is amazing as there are a variety of nationalities taking the course, and you learn a lot from each other and how to work with each other. And, of course, I love the international opportunities we get by studying abroad on grand tours or exchanges, and I love being able to write my thesis on the other side of the world.
Overall, I really enjoy the practical approach as it helps me learn the theory better and gives me real-life experience, yet the study program may need a little practice itself.

Don’t fall for Marketing. It’s a de-organised institution that doesn’t seems to get on track no matter how much time is passing. I have never seen this level of de organisation, especially since NHL Stenden is a Dutch university after all and this country is renewed for the organisation. In my country this could not be a legal higher educational institution, I am not sure how this can work. Trust me, you cannot comprehend (if you are not familiar with this “university”) what a mess it is. Unfortunately, I wasted too much time in my life and money. You can find real, superior universities in the rest of the NL and Europe. This shouldn’t even exist in a normal setting.

I can’t believe how unorganized NHL Stenden is. I graduated this year and still didn’t receive my bachelor’s certificate because I need to pick it up in person! I’m an international student and how can they expect be to be there in person if I already work fulltime in another country?

Besides that, I studied at one of their partner universities for 3 years and then transferred in my fourth year to NHL Stenden (it’s how the study program works). When it was time to transfer to NHL Stenden at the beginning of my fourth year it was a complete disaster. No one knew what to do. All the different departments within NHL don’t communicate. I had to run after them! Even though they are the ones offering this study program. Lol.
When I finished my fourth year they let me know that some of my grades are missing in progresswww (online portal for grades). They acted like it was my fault but in reality, I passed everything and also had proof. It took 2 months of running after them to finally fix my grades!!!!
In the end they corrected everything but let me tell you it was a massive headache.

Over the months, we wrote numerous emails regarding complaints from multiple students about the organization of the school, but each time we don’t get a decisive answer or they won’t speak and resolve their issues.
The administration takes several weeks to process a single document! Although courses are promoted well, they have little market value since they are not relevant to careers after completion of the course. It took them ages to publish grades, surprisingly, they failed many other students because the more you stay, the more you pay!

I study Hospitality Management. I cannot recommend this university at all. The teachers are not real teachers, most of them are without pedagogic diplomas, and some of them even without any form of high education. They sent me in exchange and I had to sent them a Learning Agreement 27 times. Every time they would tell me something different about what needed to be in. A total joke. Is like the university departments don’t know about the existence of each other. Please, listen to my advice when I tell you that you could easily find a better university in the Netherlands or Europe. The quality of the studies is also really questionable because of the laziness of the so-called teachers of NHLStenden.

Leisure and event management offers a great span of working with actual clients, having design-based education that is based on learning by doing it.
Students can experience multiple site visits, which helps them to actually see how and where the work is done and what they need to make out of the project.
A big part of being a leisure student is having this great community that is surrounded by great coaches who help you in the professional field as well as a personal one.
NHL is generally a very international school, it makes everyone feel very welcome and has a great; yes, you belong here attitude.

I highly recommend having a look at NHL Stenden offer of studies as they recently launched a new system called DBE, design-based education, which basically lets you learn at your own pace, in teams and from industry challenges.

NHL Stenden recently introduced Design Based Education system, which differs a lot from the previous Problem Based Learning education system. This was, according to the students’ feedback: a disaster. The new education aims to empower more the students, which could sound positive, although many negative points are not taken into consideration. The whole semester relies on a Design Challenge that aims to provide a client (real industry partner), with solutions for its problem, the Project Team in this way will be focusing on this for 20 weeks, but if the challenge will embrace only a particular field, they will be forced to forget about the others, which makes the program less wide.
This is just small anticipation.
Feel free to contact me in case you are interested in further feedback about NHL Stenden educational shift!

Absolutely amazing abroad opportunities and with a hotel of the university to learn the practical part of the study. International environment and last year is a year of internship which creates a lot of job opportunities

I did the hospitality and tourism study at Stenden University. The university offered a good variety of practical and theoretical classes. Moreover, the balance of theoretical classes was nice: lectures and small groups of only 12 persons. In that way, individual support could be given as well.