Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel chosen as "Certified Work Placement Company of the Year 2011"

AMSTERDAM, January 2011 - This has been announced on January 13th at the Horecava in the RAI Amsterdam. Herewith, the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel & Conference Center left behind two other nominees: Restaurant Pure Smaeck in Hilversum and Restaurant Le Mirage in Emmeloord.

The winner was announced by Alien Cnossen, CEO of Kenwerk. Fred Smits, Executive Assistant Manager, and Marleen Peppelman, Assistant Human Resources Manager, accepted the award. "We are very proud of our team of teachers, who have achieved this together with the students. This award is a very nice reward for their work and commitment" said Fred Smits.

The Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel has fourteen students, eleven teachers and six prospective teachers. The jury appreciated the hotel's motto: "If you do not initially develop your people, who do you think will." According to the jury, the student is in all respects treated as a regular employee at the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel. Students Thomas Zitman and Stefan Magnusson recommend the professional and structured approach of the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel.

The publication of "Certified Work Placement Company of the Year 2011 Hospitality" was presented by television presenter, pianist, choral conductor and musicologist Gregor Bak. He introduced the nominated Work Placement companies using a specially written song which can be viewed on YouTube.

Lodewijk van der Grinten, Director of Koninklijke Horeca the Netherlands, congratulated the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel with this victory: "I respect the fact that such a large organization dares to spend such an amount of effort in this. In my opinion education is extremely important and therefore I am very proud of the Sheraton Amsterdam Airport Hotel."

Out of all proposed work placement companies, only three were nominated by the committee. The committee visited the nominated work placement companies for an oral explanation of the nomination. For the last assessment the following criteria were used: involvement in the training process, vision on training, presence of a training plan, staff policy, training environment, participation in activities, fulfilling an ambassador role and the training results.

The jury consisted of President Alien Cnossen (CEO of Kenwerk), Bart Bruggeman (CNV), Bob Schut (SVH), Gé Kleijweg (KHN), Peter Aerts (winner 2009) and Tjitte de Wolff (winner 2010). The election "Certified Work Placement Company of the Year 2011 Hospitality" is a joint initiative of Kenwerk and social partners in order to place the best work placement companies in the spotlight to The election was created to encourage learning in practice and to highlight the value that work placement companies have in the catering industry.