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“Wherever I travel, there is always an opportunity for a little Hotelschool reunion”

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Anastasia Priklonskaya 

As a young girl finishing secondary school in Russia, I knew I wanted to study abroad to gain international experience. The Netherlands provided me with that opportunity - because of its international character and the fact that it is simply a very nice country. As a bonus, it was not too far from Russia. When I visited Hotelschool The Hague I felt at home immediately, so the choice was easy. I graduated in 2007, after my internship in New York at the head office of Leading Hotels of the World. I came back to the Netherlands as I liked it there and didn’t feel the need to go anywhere else. I like to settle in one place, I don’t have the ambition to move all over the world.

Part of the reason behind this is that if you have a Russian passport, it is quite challenging to obtain a work permit. So it is not that easy to get a job in Europe, the US or pretty much anywhere. That is why I decided I wanted to study further, and get a Master’s degree. I was always into Finance; at Hotelschool I was always doing the finance part of different projects. I enrolled for the Nyenrode Accounting and Controlling Pre-Master and later followed the Master. I applied at KPMG Audit for a traineeship, working four days and studying one day. And I’m still with KPMG today, seven years later. I still learn every day and my job gives me a lot of opportunities to develop further. Self-improvement was the key to making it up the ladder. In September I completed the final exam for the chartered accountant qualification; I like to keep on learning.

Today I am a Manager Audit at KPMG. Every month of the year is constantly changing and I’m getting new interesting projects. I currently manage eight accounts, and I am very involved with all of my clients. Ultimately, our client contact is what really makes the difference, as we put the client first. I love the international aspect of my job; especially working with Russian clients, it keeps the Russian connection going and it gives me a chance to visit my family and friends as well.

I do love traveling. Where do I want to go next? Everywhere! On the top of my list are Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, maybe India. When travelling, it’s great that you have the chance to meet up with Hotelschool alumni. I enjoyed my time at Hotelschool The Hague, especially living in Skotel, you bond so quickly with everybody. It was always fun, even given the heavy study load and the teamwork. Now we’re all spread out all over the world, but whether I’m in Atlanta or Moscow, or anywhere, there is always an opportunity for a little Hotelschool reunion. Just two weeks ago, I attended a wedding of a friend in Budapest, and last year I visited several old friends from the Hotelschool in London. We try to keep in touch anyway we can, whenever we can, luckily Facebook makes it very easy for us.

My bachelor years were vital to my success today. The skills I learned there;  I’ll be using them for the rest of my life. Teamwork, leadership and client contact are very important in every consultancy or job, and it is skills like these that they still don’t teach in many Master programmes. The fact that we practiced feedback and worked exclusively in teams was very beneficial. I will never forget the Outdoor programme in the second year, it was a tough psychological experience in the winter. We had to sleep outdoors, it was really cold and we built a tent, but it was too small for everyone, and I remember some of us had to sleep on the floor. It definitely brings you closer as a team, and rarely do you find leadership programmes like this at other universities.

I like to take things as they come, moment by moment, and that’s why I don’t know where I’ll be in ten years, but probably in a finance-related position. I’m quite ambitious in general, so I’m not going to be a stay-at-home mom, that’s for sure!

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Don’t only look at tomorrow, but also take a look at the day after.”

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Dennis Goeppel
Director Aircraft Management & Aircraft Sales

It was obvious I would end up in the aviation sector as I always had an enormous passion for commercial aviation. Since I was little I collected aircraft models, I watched aircraft at airports, and I followed airline companies in their development. I always assumed I wanted to become a pilot, but then I found out that I wanted to focus more on strategy at management level. I loved exploring countries and cultures; that’s something really special about the international aviation environment.

The international character of Hotelschool The Hague appealed to me, especially the solid base of theory combined with practical education and international internships. I was a very motivated student, passed all the exams at the first attempt and had good grades. Throughout my study at Hotelschool The Hague, I was already focused on a future career in aviation. Every step I took, my internships, my projects, reports, they were all aimed towards my future career. For my first internship, I was persistent on finding an internship at an international business hub. That’s why I chose Dubai; it’s an international city and environment to work in. I ended up working for the Jumeirah Group at the Madinat Jumeirah Resort. I worked 11 hours a day, 6 days a week and I met very interesting people.

For my management internship, I naturally wanted to find a company in aviation, hoping I could eventually stay there and get a contract. I have to thank Elina Sperth, the placement coordinator at Hotelschool The Hague, she knew someone at PrivatAir in Geneva, Switzerland. Subsequently, I started my internship in Geneva. I was involved in restructuring a division of the company called Business Aviation (meaning private jets). The internship was great, as PrivatAir,  renowned in both business and commercial aviation, has a very high service level and quality standards, and deals  with ultra-high net worth individuals and VIP clients (who occasionally already happened to be the same clients as the VIP clients I worked with in Dubai). After my internship, PrivatAir offered me a full time contract. I graduated in July, went on vacation in August and started as a fulltime employee in September 2011.

I started as “Manager Business Aviation” and grew from there into “Manager Aircraft Management and Aircraft Sales”. Clients from all around the world come to us for aircraft sales and acquisition, aircraft management and aircraft charter services. PrivatAir provides complete acquisition, sales and support services for (heavy) business jet owners. At the other end, we work with customers who can afford to charter a private jet, type Boeing or Airbus, for private use.  To put it simply: we work with extremely wealthy people - an international clientele with an emphasis on Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Our business can be very delicate and discrete. When you deal with numbers that can (sometimes) exceed € 100 million (especially in aircraft trading), you need a solid partner like PrivatAir. The company's wide range of clients include royalty, heads of state, public officials, celebrities from the arts, sports and entertainment industries, captains of industry and private aircraft owners. When I started, naturally this environment was quite surreal but after a while you get used to it. You get familiar with the clientele and the international character of the company.

After 4 years, I was recently promoted to “Director Aircraft Management & Aircraft Sales”, heading the Aircraft Sales and Aircraft Management department. My responsibilities are more or less the same, but now I work on a more strategic level. In addition, I also serve as Chief Operating Officer for AirClub, the leading corporate jet alliance. The idea behind AirClub is to become the leading alliance within the sector of Business Aviation (so private jets). Currently I am working on global coverage, even expanding to the US. The alliance is still in a startup phase; however, AirClub already represents around 100 private jets in Europe and a few in the United States.

My average workweek can be quite surreal sometimes. If you think about it, it is quite bizarre to have business meetings on a mega yacht in Monaco or in a palace in Dubai. However, it does enable me to self-reflect. It is interesting to see that extreme wealth comes with extreme power and responsibility. Actually, it makes me very happy with the (normal) life I have. I enjoy going back to my hometown (Venlo) in the weekend, spending time with my family and friends, or meeting new people at my favorite bar around the corner.

Recently I traveled around the world in two weeks together with a colleague also from Hotelschool The Hague. Unfortunately I can’t take a lot of vacation, so we carefully planned it and decided to go for it. It was crazy, travelling almost 40,000 kilometers around the world, following the Equator. We started in Geneva, went to Frankfurt, Singapore, Sydney, Auckland, Tahiti, Los Angeles and Las Vegas before we returned to Geneva again. When we came back it felt like we had traveled for 3 months.

My advice: don’t only look at tomorrow, but also at the day after. Use the elements from your education that fit with your plans for the future and focus on those, use them to your advantage. Additionally, feel privileged to be able to study at Hotelschool The Hague. You are the lucky ones, being able to get an education, being able to study: not everyone has that opportunity!

“Eat your veggies, people! And learn your Finance!

Yaela Betsalel
Typhoon Hospitality

I own a Marketing and PR company, specialised in the hospitality industry. This means we get to tell the stories of awesome hospitality brands, anything from traditional restaurants, bars, hotels, spirits to food brands, hospitality suppliers and culinary events. For those brands we provide all kinds of communication: PR, design, copywriting, events, social media, you name it, we can do it. We are a niche agency, focussed on Hospitality.

I actually started this company by accident. I was working in a hotel, meanwhile I organised an event, called the Amsterdam Bar Week. This became so big that I quit my job and focused on that. During Bar Week, we basically organised 100 events in 5 days, all brand activations in different bars. It was fun, but not very profitable for me, as it was just one week per year. But then the bars and brands contacted me and asked me if I could do something like that on an ongoing basis, and so I started with Typhoon Hospitality in 2012. I didn’t have a well thought out business plan, we take it day by day and learn through trial and error. We grew very rapidly in less than three years; now we are with 15 people and we have over 40 clients. 80% of my staff are HTH alumni.

What I enjoyed most at Hotelschool The Hague is working in groups on realistic projects. With much of the theory I wondered: when will I ever use this? But with these projects, everything was translated back to a realistic situation. So everything we did, whether I liked it or not, felt very useful.

What you learn at the hotel school is to be very resourceful, to be very creative in finding solutions and to be a jack of all trades. That for me is the essence of the school: Hotelschool The Hague produces problem solvers!

The classes that were most useful for me were the Finance classes. I hated Finance, I was never a numbers girl. However, running my own business, I couldn’t have done it if I didn’t have any knowledge on the very basic finance principles I learned at Hotelschool The Hague. It is so important. Eat your veggies, people! And learn your Finance!

At Hotelschool The Hague you learn to combine the strengths of your team members to finish a project. For me that is now so natural. Also in my team, I don’t try to mold people to fit into a certain role, I look at what a person does well and I fit that into a job. This is why we also have rather unusual job titles. We have a Master of Organised Chaos, a Guy Who Makes Shit Happen, a Match Maker, a Fire Starter, a Pitcher, a Gate Keeper, a Story Teller. One guys job title is 11110000:10011111:10011000:10001001, that is obviously our programmer, and his title is a winky smiley face in binary code.

You can think these are all silly job titles, but they’re not, they tell exactly what the person does. All our team members are very proud of their job title. Besides that, I don’t want hierarchy within the company. It doesn’t matter what we call you, just be you and be the best you, you can be.

Plans for the future? I don’t know even know where I will be tomorrow. I think Typhoon has proven to be a successful formula. It can generate a rapid growth and at the same time maintain clientele. I am very proud of our new clients, but even more proud of our existing clients who have been with us from the beginning. We are in a niche market with limitations, so for the future I foresee that we will cross some borders. Physical borders that is, hopefully somewhere sunny. Not metaphorically, as Hospitality will always be the focus, and is what we are good at.

Starting your own company is amazing, but I couldn’t have done it without 8 years of working experience, so my advice to students dreaming of starting their own business is: gain work experience first! Look around at different companies, learn from them, take bits and pieces from these experiences and later on start your own company. And read a lot: there are so many amazing blogs out there, in whatever field you are interested in! Hospitality, Operations, HR, Marketing, the list is endless. Reading those blogs on a daily basis, you can learn so much. Keep developing and keep challenging yourself. You are never done learning.

“You have to keep developing to stay new and interesting for people to keep coming back.”

Chong Chu
De Foodhallen

We have opened three interrelated concepts within De Hallen Amsterdam. Brasserie Halte 3, opened first in August 2014. It is an all-day concept, starting with breakfast, which flows over into lunch, dinner and it is a place to go for drinks. Our menu has something for everyone, especially for local residents. The second concept, Meat West, only opens for dinner at 18:00. It focuses on meat and wine and is more ‘fine-dining’. This second concept opened in September 2014.

The third and largest concept, the Foodhallen, with 1,100m2, opened in October 2014. The Foodhallen encompasses 21 food concepts where we provide the space and all the facilities, like chairs and tables. We own the 5 bars inside. The Foodhallen are a meeting place for friends to catch up and have a drink with a snack. You can come here with a group of people and everyone can eat something completely different.

In the first three months there was no time to stand still and reflect. There was a huge buzz around the Foodhallen, so everyone wanted to come and see what it was all about: every night hundreds of people turned up, 7 nights a week, it was insane. And when there’s a buzz, you have to deliver and live up to everyone’s expectations.

After 4, 5 months, things started to calm down. Operations were running smoothly, everyone knew what to do. Only then did we have time to stand still, take a look around and realise: wow this is what we created. What we’ve done is crazy, in three months opening three huge concepts, going from 0 staff to 160 employees, it was a lot to handle. Operations, staff, suppliers, other partners, everybody wanted something from us. Working 7 days a week, 12 hours per day, it was a crazy roller coaster ride. Now I can even sometimes take a day off. Which I really need sometimes, to be away from it all, to clear my mind and to come back with a fresh, clean mind-set and new ideas.

Not everything is perfect; we are still learning. We just opened, we haven’t even finished a full year. We especially want to learn from our own mistakes: what did we do wrong, what could have been better? We listen closely to complaints, from “there are too few seats” to “it’s too hot inside” and “the quality of the air inside is not good”. These are all points we are working on, to keep improving all the time. You have to keep developing to stay new and interesting for people to keep coming back.

After graduating I went to Shanghai to work there, came back, and started a small company importing bonsai trees; I did that for a year, still wondering what to do with my life. Afterwards I opened a few Chinese and Japanese restaurants in Rotterdam and then this opportunity came along. Two of my friends and current partners went to Madrid and got inspired by Mercado de San Miguel; they came back and we talked about it, thinking: this is really what is missing in Amsterdam.

We might open similar places like the Foodhallen in other cities, adjusted to that particular city and the people from that city, maybe also abroad.

My parents always owned restaurants so as a kid I grew up in restaurants, always walking around in kitchens and behind the bar -  I didn’t know anything else. First I didn’t want to go into the restaurant business myself, complaining about the long hours and the lack of free time, but when I went with a friend to an open day at Hotelschool The Hague, I knew: this is it, this is what I want! It’s in my blood. I learned a lot at Hotelschool The Hague, especially management skills: how to be a good manager and how to approach your staff and how to inspire them to believe in what you believe.

I have a close group of friends that I know from Hotelschool The Hague, who I still meet with every week. We were friends from day 1 at the Skotel, now 13/14 years ago. I just give them a call or send them a text saying: shall we have dinner tonight? And they will all be there! To me that is so special. And a lot of those friends from the Hotelschool now have opened bars and restaurants in Amsterdam. They are starting companies, doing something. It is great to see each other grow, also getting girlfriends, wives, and children. We’ve been to each other’s weddings. And it’s funny to see: alumni from Hotelschool The Hague are taking over Amsterdam. The other day there was an article in the newspaper: where can you eat the best steak or best burger in Amsterdam? It was a top 5, and I was on the list, Riad Farhat was on the list, Matan Shabraque was on the list, all alumni. So of course we posted it on Facebook, tagging each other: how funny is this? We are all from the same school, all friends, and we all opened places in Amsterdam. And we all inspire and motivate each other, and help each other. It was Riad who told me to come to Amsterdam; I didn’t believe him at first - now I know he was right!