Hospitality in Uniform

Hospitality in Uniform is a research project of the International Hospitality Education chair. The aim of the project is to prepare students for crisis, humanitarian, and defence-related contexts. The project integrates humanitarian ethics, resilience, and crisis skills into hospitality education through practice-based learning with real-world partners. In this way, Hospitality in Uniform addresses the growing gap between traditional hospitality programs and a labour market increasingly shaped by instability, migration, and complex ethical challenges.

What is the motivation for the project?

Graduates in hospitality are increasingly finding work outside the hotel and tourism sectors. There is growing demand for them to contribute to humanitarian aid, defence-related services, and crisis logistics. Students themselves report feeling insufficiently prepared for these roles, particularly when ethical decisions must be made under high pressure and when intercultural sensitivity and resilience are required. At the same time, hospitality curricula remain strongly rooted in commercial service models and pay little attention to hospitality as a societal and ethical practice in unstable environments. This project emerges from this gap. It responds both to students’ needs and to changes in the labour market by broadening the concept of hospitality and equipping students with competencies that remain relevant in sectors characterised by uncertainty, moral tension, and significant societal impact.

What problem does the project solve?

The project focuses on three interconnected challenges. First, current hospitality education insufficiently prepares students for non-traditional and socially relevant careers, where crisis skills and ethical reasoning are central. Second, students have few structured opportunities to translate hospitality values into concrete action in high-pressure environments with cultural diversity and limited resources. Third, the institutional connection between hospitality education and the humanitarian or defence sectors is minimal, despite the clear overlap in required competencies. Hospitality in Uniform addresses these challenges by offering humanitarian ethics and resilience training. Through scenario- and design-based learning, this can be structurally integrated into the curriculum. Close collaboration with defence and humanitarian partners ensures the development of a clear and widely supported pathway from education to new labour market domains.

Who are in the project team?

The project is led by Georges El Hajal, Senior Lecturer and Researcher at Hotel Management School Leeuwarden and a member of the International Hospitality Education research group. It is being developed in collaboration with Dr Rodney Westerlaken, Dr Geesje Duursma, and Victor de Reuver, under the supervision of Prof. Dr Hanneke Assen. Development takes place in close cooperation with a range of external partners. Students actively participate through scenario- and design-based learning, simulations, and reflective assignments. Faculty members are involved as facilitators of the learning process, guiding simulations and applied ethics workshops, contributing both to professional development and curriculum innovation.

What is the project approach?

The project adopts a design- and practice-based approach, grounded in Design-Based Education (DBE) and Scenario-Based Learning. It focuses on one of DBE’s core principles: Civic-Action Learning. Together with defence and humanitarian partners, students work on realistic and authentic challenges, confronting them with ethical dilemmas, intercultural challenges, and operational uncertainty. The learning outcomes focus on ethical reasoning, resilience, and inclusive service delivery. The module is evaluated through student performance, reflective assessments, and structured feedback, enabling continuous development and making the approach easily transferable to other programmes.

What are the main (or prelimanary) results?

The project results in a validated educational context in which humanitarian ethics and crisis skills are structurally integrated into the curriculum. Preliminary and expected outcomes include improvements in students’ ethical reasoning, resilience, and confidence in non-traditional professional contexts. In addition, the project develops concrete pedagogical and didactic strategies and scenarios that can be systematically implemented within Hotel Management School Leeuwarden and other programmes, and easily adapted for other universities of applied sciences. At the institutional level, the project strengthens collaboration with defence and humanitarian organisations and positions hospitality education as socially relevant and future-oriented. At the societal level, it contributes to a better-prepared workforce capable of applying hospitality skills in crisis, care, and public service contexts.