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 STAGEVERSLAG Rafaëla Askraba Internship company: Barcelona Vibes Tutor: Emma Jacobsson Supervisor: Heleen Van Assche
Index Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3 Foreword .................................................................................................................................. 4 Company................................................................................................................................... 5 Emma Jacobsson................................................................................................................... 5 Stuart Jones .......................................................................................................................... 6 Barcelona Vibes .................................................................................................................... 6 Barcelona Vibes’ main providers/partners ....................................................................... 7 Employees and interns.................................................................................................... 10 Barcelona Vibes’ SWOT analysis ..................................................................................... 11 DMC Solutions Barcelona ................................................................................................... 12 Brazil Vibes.......................................................................................................................... 12 My tasks.................................................................................................................................. 13 Dealing with new bookings................................................................................................. 13 Contacting and negotiating with providers ........................................................................ 16 Translating websites ........................................................................................................... 16 Handling direct bookings independently ............................................................................ 16 Evaluation ............................................................................................................................... 17 Annexes .................................................................................................................................. 19 Itinerary .............................................................................................................................. 19 Invoice................................................................................................................................. 20 2 Introduction This report will be written about the international internship I did in Barcelona this semester. When I was first looking for an international internship I decided I wanted to go somewhere outside of Europe and get to know a completely new culture. However, after talking about it with my parents and realizing finding an internship like that is rather difficult, I had to change my plans and look for something in Europe. I didn’t choose the company I was eventually enrolled in because I contacted a company that sets up internships for students. Yet, the fact that it turned out to be a travel agency/event organizing company was something I was very happy with, as I consider these sectors very dynamic and fun to work in with lots of challenges and few routine tasks. Before starting the internship I had to complete a few forms and have a Skype conversation with someone from ‘Spain Internship’, the company that set the internship up for me. They asked me if I had any preferences or if some things such as payment were important etc, all of this went smoothly and within a few days I signed my contract and had an internship! The company I would start working for from the 11th of February, was called Barcelona Vibes, a part of Bensim Travel SL, along with its sister companies Brazil Vibes and DMC Solutions Barcelona. My internship mentor was called Emma Jacobsson, originally from Sweden but living in Barcelona for the last ten years and one of the owners of Bensim Travel SL. As soon as I entered the workplace, I noticed the relaxed and nice atmosphere in the office. Because the company mainly works with internships as staff, there were a lot of young and international people, for example I met people from New York, Finland, Denmark, Russia, et cetera. All of them were more or less the same age as me, so it was not difficult at all to make friends and feel comfortable from the beginning. Overall, I can say that I noticed myself making a lot of progress over these 3 months, mainly in communicating with other companies and business partners, but also in relationships with clients. Other things I have learned are making invoices, negotiating prices and maintaining business relationships. Because there were also 2 new companies being set up in the period I was there, I witnessed the process of setting up new companies, creating marketing strategies, et cetera. This internship made me realize I am ready to start working once I graduate. I hear a lot of friends saying that as soon as they had their internship they immediately wanted to go back to school and postponed the working life a little bit more, but I experienced exactly the opposite. I noticed there were people in that office that had studies for more years than I have, but it didn’t mean that they were a better workforce at all. Also, I now realize that work can be something to look forward to, as long as you find a job that suits you and you can work in a team that get along with. In this report, I will be writing about the company I worked in and about the internship itself, such as the tasks I had to do, what I learned from that, et cetera. Finally, I will conclude by mentioning the competences I developed my skills in and which ones I think I could still use some more experience for. 3 Foreword First of all I would like to thank my parents for giving me the opportunity to spend a whole year abroad, studying and doing an internship. I realize very well that not everyone gets to do something like this and it has taught me more than I could have imagined. Second, I would also like to thank Emma for giving me the opportunity to prove myself and to work independently with a lot of responsibility in an amazing, young and fun team like the Barcelona Vibes team. And last, thank you to all my friend and family who supported me whenever I doubted myself and for not forgetting about me being away for almost one year. 4 Company Bensim Travel SL DMC Solu`ons Barcelona Brazil Vibes Barcelona Vibes As mentioned before, Barcelona Vibes is a part of mother company Bensim Travel SL. SL stands for ‘Sociedad Limitada’, which means that Bensim Travel is a limited liability company, or in dutch ‘een besloten vennootschap’. Bensim Travel SL today has three daughter companies, namely DMC Solutions Barcelona, Brazil Vibes and Barcelona Vibes. All three companies have their very competitive pricing in common. Emma Jacobsson and Stuart Jones, who met in 2008 in the bar where Emma worked at the time, own this mother company. Emma is the one who sets up everything in Barcelona, she is called the operations manager. Stuart is the one behind the scenes, thinking about marketing, expanding, et cetera. He has been in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, to set up a new company there in order to jump on the Olympic Games of 2016 and World Cup of 2014 train. Stuart owns several companies, all with partners, all over the world but all based in Barcelona. They all have to do with event organizing, either parties, either touristic trips, either corporate events, and so on. Emma Jacobsson Emma was born in Sweden in 1980. When she grew up, she actually studied to become a physio-­‐
therapist. When she was 22 years old, she was heartbroken and a friend who lived in Barcelona at the time decided to invite her over a lot during the next year. After a while, Emma decided to live in Barcelona herself and initially started working in several bars. When she worked in the ‘Travel Bar’, owned by Stuart Jones and partners back then, she met Stuart. After getting to know each other Stuart told her about the company he wanted to set up, Barcelona Vibes, it would be an inbound travel agency in Barcelona for all kinds of groups. This is when Emma started setting up Barcelona Vibes along with Stuart, in August 2008. After a while, business went better and better and Emma meant to go do something else, but Stuart wanted her to stay and upgrade her status in the company. However, Emma refused and stated she would only keep working for Barcelona Vibes if she could become a partner. This is how their real cooperation started and Emma became co-­‐owner of Barcelona Vibes. Today she is called the Operations Manager, 5 Stuart Jones Stuart was born in Australia and basically started travelling as soon as he could. Along the way he set up several companies with partners he met on one of his trips each time. For example the company called Stoke Travel (part of mother company Sirowek SL, which he owns with several partners), this company organizes surf trips in Taghazout, San Sebastian, Brazil, and so on; but also parties in Barcelona such as several Erasmus parties, the famous Barcelona Boat Parties and many more; on top of that, the company also organizes big packages for people to go party in other countries when there are special events such as Queens Day in Amsterdam, or Oktoberfest in Germany. Stuart operated from Rio de Janeiro during this semester because he was there setting up his newest project ‘Brazil Vibes’. In the meantime, Brazil Vibes had interns in the office doing desk research, contacting hotels and restaurants, creating a marketing strategy and websites, and so on. He gave them tasks and directions through the internet, with a lot of Skype meetings, and his team basically worked independently. ‘DMC Solutions Barcelona’ had been created the semester before, and for that company as well, interns were working on developing the company and getting the first bookings in as well as translating their website and marketing campaign in French. Barcelona Vibes Barcelona Vibes, the company I worked for mainly, is a travel agency in Barcelona that sets up everything any kind of group of at least 8 people would want organized in Barcelona. The company’s clients can basically be divided into two big parts, the first part would be stag and hen groups and the second part would be school and business groups. The stag and hen bookings come in via a few English agencies that English people book their bachelor weekend with, these agencies then contact Barcelona Vibes to actually organize everything in Barcelona. The names of these agencies are Last Night of Freedom, Chillisauce, Crazy Voyages, Spicy Corp, et cetera. Bar crawls, club entries, strip poker nights, pole dance classes, cooking classes, football games, … are only a few of the many activities Barcelona Vibes can easily set up for clients. The average client in this group is a 25-­‐35 year old English person. The other part, which is also usually the bigger groups (sometimes over 100 people), comes in via direct bookings. A direct booking is simply a form someone filled in on the Barcelona Vibes website. However, Barcelona Vibes is trying to attract new groups of customers such as student and corporate groups. This new trend demonstrates that the agency is adapting to the tourism market in Barcelona since in 2011, almost half of the temporal visitors in Barcelona were staying the city for business purposes. Barcelona Vibes is a specialized travel agency with as a main objective to stand out by being extremely flexible, by listening to its clients and by being quick, well organized and efficient. As far as the company’s philosophy is concerned, Barcelona Vibes is an ‘informal but serious and reliable company’ that always looks for the best options for every client, informal meaning that they strive to come across as a young and fun, yet reliable and serious company. These characteristics have allowed the company to constantly increase its turnover, year after year. However, since the company is still relatively young and small, it doesn’t have a whole lot of employees: Emma and Katja Kjornaes are the ones who basically run the company, there is one accountant named Veronica and after that, there is the marketing, management assistant and web design team, formed by interns like myself. 6 Barcelona Vibes’ main providers/partners Barcelona Vibes does not only collaborate with Stoke Travel, mentioned above, but also and mainly with a few British stag and hen agencies: Chillisauce and Last Night of Freedom. Barcelona Vibes is also active on the French market, for example the company recently started working with Spicy Corp, a French stag and hen agency, as well as Crazy Voyages, based in Paris. In this section, I will briefly define each agency and the type of clients they provide for Barcelona Vibes. Stoke Travel (website: www.stoketravel.com) is dedicated to student and backpacker travel. It is part of Stuart’s other company, Sirowek SL. Stoke organizes surf camps (in France, Morocco, Spain, Portugal and so on), sells festival packages (Oktoberfest, La Tomatina, the Running of the Bulls) and organizes several parties (Erasmus parties, Barcelona boat parties) and activities (cooking classes,…) in Barcelona. On top of that, Stoke Travel also has a bar in the city center of Barcelona, called Stoke Bar. Stoke’s clients are generally younger than Barcelona Vibes’ clients, but for activities such as boat parties, cooking classes, cocktail classes in Stoke Bar,… Barcelona Vibes sets these up through Stoke Travel. Chillisauce (website: www.chillisauce.co.uk) is a British stag and hen company, launched in 2001 and since then the largest provider of activity based events in the UK. As mentioned on their website, they do not only provide stag and hen weekends but also teambuilding trips, activity breaks, company parties, et cetera. This basically means that Chillisauce’s activities are very similar to the ones Barcelona Vibes offers in Barcelona, only CS offers them in England. Below, you can see how clients can fill in forms on the website in order to ask for a quote. 7 Last Night of Freedom (website: www.lastnightoffreedom.co.uk) is also a British stag and hen agency and Chillisauce’s biggest concurrent. LNOF was launched in 1999 and its partnership with Barcelona Vibes started in 2009. Their unique selling point is that they claim to be the very first stag and hen agency on the market and they also claim to be the biggest agency in England. They also underline the fact that they have gained an industry-­‐wide reputation for their unique and customized approach to each customer. Below, you can see LNOF’s contact forms on their website. 8 Crazy Voyages (website: www.crazy-­‐voyages.fr) is a French online travel agency founded in 2009 and based in Paris. The clients they provide for Barcelona Vibes are usually groups of 5 to 15 females who often book salsa classes, tapas dinners and bar crawls. Crazy Voyages is specialized in party trips with friends throughout whole Europe, they focus on different target groups by using different websites for each group. For example they have crazy-­‐evg.com for stag parties, crazy-­‐evjf.com for hen parties and crazy-­‐voyages.fr for friend trips in general. 9 Employees and interns Because Barcelona Vibes is still a rather new and developing company, the number of paid employees is still very limited. Stuart Jones and Emma Jacobsson are both owners of Bensim Travel SL with Emma working in the office in Barcelona and Stuart travelling the world in order to create new companies and partnerships in different countries. During my stay at the company, Emma managed a group of seven employees and interns. Katja Kjornaes, who used to be an intern but got hired after her internship 6 months ago, deals with most direct bookings that come in through the Barcelona Vibes website. Finally, Veronica is an employee as well as she is the company’s accountant. The six interns in the office were the following: -­‐ Mark Nielsen (22), from Copenhagen, studies at Copenhagen Business Academy (KEA) and was one of the web-­‐ and graphic designers. He designed most of the logos, flyers, etc for Barcelona Vibes as well as DMC Solutions and Brazil Vibes. -­‐ Pernille Ostergaard (23) is also from Copenhagen and also studies at Copenhagen Business Academy (KEA) and she, as well, was one of the web-­‐ and graphic designers at the company. Pernille’s main job was to create and launch websites with the layouts that Mark and Galit designed first. She as well worked for all 3 of Bensim’s daughter companies. -­‐ Galit Lonstrup (22), also from Copenhagen and the same school as Mark and Pernille, basically did the same job as Mark. -­‐ Melanie Docquier (22), from Belgium, studies at KUL and deals with new bookings for Barcelona Vibes and French communication for DMC Solutions Barcelona. Melanie and I did more or less the same job within the company. -­‐ Arnes Begic (20), from Holland, studies at Avans University of Applied Sciences in Breda. Arnes worked for Brazil Vibes, doing research, setting up the website and analyse future partnerships. He received tasks and information from Stuart via Skype and email, but Emma managed him as well, because Stuart was not in the country. Barcelona Vibes focuses on five main objectives: -­‐ Providing quality incoming tourism services by suggesting a broad variety of free time activities in the city and by being greatly flexible with the clients’ needs. -­‐ Attracting new groups of tourists for different purposes such as bachelor parties and educational trips via its website and with the help of its multilingual workforce. -­‐ Strengthening ‘old’ partnerships with stag and hen agencies such as Last Night of Freedom, Chillisauce in England and Crazy Voyages in France. -­‐ Creating new partnerships with foreign travel agencies in order to attract more travelers and professionals to Barcelona. -­‐ Giving a positive and professional image of the company, its employees and its activities (stag and hen parties for example) in foreign countries. 10 Barcelona Vibes’ SWOT analysis Strengths -­‐ The owners of the company have both been living in Barcelona for a long time. The company has become a reference in the city; they have a good network of providers, guides, etc. -­‐ The company cooperates with other companies such as a few English companies who organize stag and hen parties; these companies constantly send bookings through for groups who want their party to be in Barcelona. -­‐ This company is very flexible because they have a young team that can take care of anything. -­‐ This is a fast team; they answer all enquiries within one day, which is exceptional in Spain, where no one is ever in a rush. -­‐ All employees speak several languages, which is also exceptional in Barcelona, most of the people don’t speak decent English. -­‐ The company doesn’t have a lot of personnel costs as they work with a lot of interns. Weaknesses -­‐ Inexperienced compared to others as the manager actually bumped into this job, she actually studies physiotherapy -­‐ The owner is in Brazil at the moment starting up Brazil Vibes, so he’s not very involved himself -­‐ No social media marketing -­‐ The company works with a lot of interns who are only here for a few months, so after they leave other interns replace them. This way information and experience gets lost. Also, if there is a client who booked a year in advance, he or she will probably have to deal with 4 different interns contacting him or her. Opportunities -­‐ Barcelona is in the top of European cities visited by tourists, so tourism in this city is one of the main activities. -­‐ This is a relatively young company that keeps growing and there’s a lot of spin-­‐offs possible, which is why different departments are being set up all the time, for example DMC which organizes events and trips etc for companies. But right now a student department is being set up as well, to organize trips for school groups. -­‐ The company can also expand to the rest of Spain, such as Madrid, Ibiza, they even get requests to organize trips to Mallorca. Threats -­‐ Big, well-­‐known travel agencies have a headstart as every client probably already knows them -­‐ The economical crisis that hit Spain probably even harder than other European countries. -­‐ Any consumer behavior change can affect this company, if for example English people stop doing stag parties, Barcelona Vibes will lose a lot of bookings. So they are dependent on their consumers in general. 11 DMC Solutions Barcelona DMC1 Solutions Barcelona is one of the newest companies, focusing on corporate destination management in Barcelona. This means that the company offers anything any company visiting Barcelona would need. For example when a company wants to organize an incentive in Barcelona or a teambuilding trip, they can contact DMC Solutions Barcelona and their professional team of locals will set the trip up from scratch, completely customized to the customer’s wishes. Their key values, as stated on their website, are quickness, simplicity, effectiveness and professionalism. Moreover, the company is located in the heart of Barcelona and young professionals coming from very different educational and linguistic backgrounds compound its team. Thanks to its reliable network and its committed workforce, DMC Solutions Barcelona can ensure its clients’ events a guaranteed success. The company has been launched just a few weeks ago and in the meantime has had more or less 5 enquiries. Because Bensim is still recruiting Operations staff for DMC Solutions, their bookings are being passed to Barcelona Vibes for now because that company has more experience and staff. The company is active on numerous social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. The fact that they have a young team only benefits these kinds of activities. Brazil Vibes Brazil Vibes is Bensim’s other new daughter company, even newer than DMC because their goal is to attract customers for the World Cup and Olympic Games in Brazil in 2014 and 2016. Brazil Vibes’ objectives are to attract groups of clients to Brazil for the World Cup, the Olympic Games and for Rio De Janeiro in general. This brand-­‐new company will provide accommodation, transfers and tours throughout the whole city, football tickets, et cetera. Their target customer is a 30-­‐40 year old who is interested in sports and is looking to visit Brazil with friends or family during these sports events in the next few years. 1
DMC, Destination Management Company 12 My tasks Dealing with new bookings The first and easiest task I got, was dealing with incoming bookings from the stag and hen agencies. What I had to do was once I received an email from Last Night of Chillisauce (these were the only ones I dealt with in the beginning because they were the easiest bookings!), was check the booking form and especially the prices filled in and compare them with Barcelona Vibes’ General Price list. This is what the pricelist looked like, with colons for ‘our cost’ and after that, prices for every agency in euros or sometimes in pounds. The next step was to check availability with providers (my mentor Emma did this in the beginning) and confirm the booking. After that, I had to add the client’s booking to the Event Organizer document, which I can’t show here because that’s not allowed. This document was an excel sheet just like the price list, but every colon would be a date and under that you would find the client’s name, number of people of the group, phone number, email address, the agency the booking came from, the different activities and a few internal notes on payments, reimbursements, airport transfers, flight details, et cetera. To have a good overview, every day from Thursday until Sunday had their own color. The other days of the week didn’t have a color because there are hardly any bookings on weekdays. 13 The next step, was to make the client’s invoice2, which we did in excel on Google Docs as well, with fixed formulas (unless it was a direct booking), sometimes this was easy to do, sometimes it wasn’t because clients booked packages or asked for extra discounts et cetera. After that, I had to charge the client his first deposit of £100 or more or less €115, depending on that day’s exchange rate, and send the client an email informing him about his booking. Below, you can see an example of such an email. After that, the client had to be contacted a few times for different payments such as second deposits and balance payment. Finally, the client would receive his detailed itinerary3 one week before arrival. Dear **** Thank you for your Barcelona booking with Last Night Of Freedom in partnership with Barcelona Vibes! I am your contact on location in Spain and I am setting up your activities in Barcelona. We have booked everything for you as requested from the UK team Last night of Freedom. We have charged you your first deposit of 100£ or €117 (we subtracted €2 because our clients always get charged exchange currency fees). Your balance of 188£ is due a month before arrival, please see attached invoice for more information. Your balance will be paid by yourself, one month before arrival. We will contact you for this payment, so you don't have to worry about it. The payment instructions are at the bottom of this email! If you would be thinking about booking extra activities for your weekend, you can take a look at these : Stag Fiesta -­‐ 3 course meal, with optional unlimited beer, a sexy stripper & bar crawl. Bar Crawl -­‐ Our fun guide will take you to the best bars and club in Barcelona. Club Entry -­‐ Beat the queues to the best clubs in Barcelona Karting -­‐ Drive like Hamilton on the most advanced technological track in Europe. Paintball -­‐ Off to war at this great paintball venue just outside of Barcelona. Beach-­‐Babe-­‐Beer Bike Cruise -­‐ Bikini´s galore as you drink beer at the beach bars. 5-­‐a-­‐Side Football -­‐ Show your skills, then an optional Nou Camp Stadium Tour Poker/Strip Poker -­‐ Be entertained during the poker night with a hot stripper. Quads -­‐ Feel the thrill of these 250cc beasts as you bounce around on the quads. Human Table Football -­‐ A life-­‐sized version of this game is hilarious! Water Sports -­‐ Banana Boat, Sailing, Kayak, Parasailing. Mix of adventure and relax. If you would have any questions about any of this, feel free to contact me at any time! I'm happy to help! _________________________________________ Payment instructions: If you would like to pay by credit card please follow these steps: -­‐ Go to http://www.barcelonavibes.com/payment2.html -­‐ Fill out the required fields, the group name should not contain more than 8 characters or spaces or symbols. Please fill in 'Nicholls' here. -­‐ You can only pay in Euros, and amount to be paid is stated above, and in the invoice in column deposit/euro. We use todays exchange rate at http://www.xe.com/ -­‐ Click ‘submit’ and follow the steps on your screen. 2
See an example of a simple invoice attached at the end of this report See an example of such an itinerary attached at the end of this report 3
14 If you would like to pay by bank transfer, we require a scan of the bank statement, since it takes about 3 bank days for the money to enter our account. If you do pay by bank transfer make sure you subtract the credit/debit card fee, that is already added on the invoice. Bank Details: Bank Name: La Caixa Account Name: Bensim Travel SL Account Number:2100 1358 11 0200179662 IBAN: ES4621001358110200179662 Bic/Swift: CAIXESBBXXX Bank Address: ENRIC GRANADOS 127, Barcelona, Spain. ____________________________________ Kind regards, Rafaela Askraba With this task, I think I trained two important competences, namely ‘capability of solving problems’ and ‘being customer friendly’, but also simply on ‘communicating in English’ and ‘efficiently working with IT’. First of all, obviously, when a booking comes in, you’re supposed to know what the next steps are for you, often there are no problems but sometimes a client wants to do a last minute booking or has very specific requests. As Barcelona Vibes promotes itself as being flexible and able to set up anything you wish in Barcelona, they are supposed to be able to do so when it comes down to it. Therefore, when a client has a specific or complicated request, I had to do my best to be creative and assertive enough to negotiate with providers to convince them to work with us or to sometimes make exceptions for us. This last part also shows that I had to take a lot of initiative, which is another competence I was supposed to develop during my internship. Secondly, it’s only normal that I had to make sure I was always friendly and helpful to customers. This is why I sometimes personalized my emails instead of always sending standardized answers to my clients. For example when someone would ask a lot of questions all the time, I would always make sure I stayed friendly, answered all their questions clearly and I often wrote something in the trend of ‘don’t worry, ask away, I’m here to help!’ or ‘we’re happy to help you organize the perfect weekend’. I would very often notice that clients really appreciated that by simply sending me back something like ‘Thank you Rafaela, very helpful!’. This can be linked to another competence as well, being ‘efficiently organizing communication’, I also remember when in the morning I had a very full inbox, I was able to work around it in (relatively) no time and handling every email according to priority. I did that by making different folders within my inbox, for example ‘urgent’, ‘to do’, ‘ask Emma’, … et cetera. Next, making invoices required me to be able to work with Excel formulas, but also with Google Docs. Luckily, I have had a lot of courses during my education on IT such as Word and Excel, and I picked this up very quickly. 15 Contacting and negotiating with providers As I mentioned before, I had to contact and negotiate with a lot of providers, for this task I think I learned more on ‘communicating in English’ again, but also just like before I mentioned being ‘customer friendly’, only this time it’s the other way around and I would call it ‘provider friendly’, which is very important as well of course. It might even be more important to have impeccable relationships with your providers, I think. If you lose one client, of course that’s a bad thing, but jeopardizing your relationship with a provider clearly has more severe consequences. When that happens, your providers won’t make exceptions for you anymore, they will likely be less friendly to your customers, et cetera. Translating websites During the internship, Stuart gave Melanie and me the extra task of translating the DMC Solutions website in French whenever we had the time. Melanie and I divided different parts of the websites and translated whenever we had some free time. However, we also helped each other, or at least she helped me a lot because her mother tongue is French. This task can obviously be linked to communicating in ‘French’ and maybe also with ‘taking initiative’, as I just had to choose myself when I would do what, I just had to make sure it was done by the end of the internship, which it was. I also got to participate in a few meetings of this company regarding their social media strategy in which I was asked to share my opinion on how to do their social media. For this, I needed to use the theory I had learned during my education on e-­‐marketing. Handling direct bookings independently The more I grew within the company and gained more experience, I noticed that Emma also started trusting me more and more. Not only didn’t she feel the need to check my emails before I sent them off, after a while she also gave me the responsibility of dealing with direct bookings completely independently. This was especially in the last month of my internship, which I really loved doing because it was challenging to me and whenever I got a group to book, I knew it was all my work and I was very satisfied afterwards. This also meant that I had to deal with these bookings mainly by myself and so I had to take a lot of initiative, for example my biggest group was a corporate group of 50 people from a winery that wanted to come to Barcelona to celebrate their good sales of the year. I had to ask them the right questions while making sure I came across as professional and efficient and at the same time I had to start calling and emailing providers all over Barcelona in order to be able to offer them everything they requested. This group wanted to stay at a 4 or 5 star hotel nearby the beach and they also wanted to consume their own wines and they wanted to organize wine tastings in the hotel. So I had to look for a hotel that offered enough availability, with the good space for the wine tasting AND willing to serve the group’s own wines. I did find a suitable hotel for this group in the end, but I don’t know if they have booked or not because my internship ended before they made a decision. For these kinds of bookings I needed my competences of taking initiative, communicating in English, being very customer friendly, organizing all communication (because when you send an email to 60 hotels, the next few days your inbox is a mess and hard to organize and keep an overview) and looking up information and edit and control it in an efficient way. 16 Evaluation I already described my personal experiences and impressions of my internship in the previous part, but I will focus on evaluating myself a little bit more in this part of my report. First of all, I think I mainly learned more on communicating with stakeholders within a company, being not only customers but also providers, partners and even the environment. As Barcelona Vibes sets up almost all of their bookings online, I was emailing people 80% of the time. The other 20% was personal contact with people either by phone (clients and providers) or sometimes even face to face (providers). I think I communicated good and efficiently with clients and providers as I sent out 492 emails during my internship and received 631. In the beginning, I felt I was rather nervous contacting providers, because I wanted to make sure I came across as very professional, I didn’t want to stumble or not find my words via phone, or risk sending inappropriate emails that wouldn’t be polite enough. Soon enough, I found out that the people working at these companies are in the same position as I was, they too sometimes stumble on the phone, but you’re supposed to see each other as colleagues. Also, if you have a good, relatively informal relationship with the people you work with you also get to know each other better and people will be more likely to do you a favor if necessary. Secondly, of course, I got a lot better at communicating in English, by the end of my internship I could effortlessly write an email in English without having to think about my words or about how I should address different people. Not only emails but also spoken English, on the phone for example, went better and better over time. At the end of my internship I could easily make a phonecall to providers or partners without too many hesitation or uncertainty, whereas in the beginning I noticed I got nervous and stumbled sometimes when on the phone. Moreover, I became a lot more independent, this doesn’t only have to do with the internship of course, living by yourself for almost a year makes a person very independent, but as I mentioned above I got a lot of responsibility from Emma by the end of my internship. Also, as I mentioned before, my internship was a very positive experience to me, in contrary to a lot of people I know I actually look forward to start working after I graduate. I did realize, however, that I wouldn’t really like working in a very rigid and strict company, as I’m not very good with people bossing me around. Also, I’ve always had the idea of not really wanting to work to make someone else rich, one of my favorite quotes is ‘If you don’t build your dreams someone else will hire you to help build theirs’. So I think it’s clear that I’d rather start my company and work for myself but I realize it’s unfortunately a little too soon for that right now. I did like working at Barcelona Vibes a lot though, because I really felt like being part of a dynamic, young team. Also, there wasn’t a very clear hierarchy in the company because our manager and mentor, Emma, sat next to us most of the time, treating us as if we were equal to her as far as that’s possible. Because we had a lot of interns working in the company from different countries and even cultures, working in this team was a real enriching experience. I didn’t experience a lot of difficulties with any of my tasks regarding not having had the proper education in order to do my job. Then again, I didn’t have to write out big strategy reports or business plans during my internship, which is what my education focused on more. What I did use from my education was marketing and intercultural relationships because I worked in a company with people from a lot of different places such as Australia, United States, Denmark, Czech Republic, Poland, et cetera. Also, I made invoices and had to calculate profits on certain activities in order to make up packages 17 the company could offer to get more bookings. I was asked to look at the price list and take a look at which activities the company had most profit on or which one were very low-­‐cost for the company and based on that, Emma asked me to figure out a few good combinations with package prices that we could get more clients with. Another skill I learned in my education and have used during my internship is networking as I attended the Tourism Fair in Barcelona and had to set up contacts for both Barcelona Vibes and DMC Solutions. I also occasionally got invited by restaurants, hotels or other providers to come and take a look at their hotel or try their food et cetera. Obviously my internship was linked with my education as I study International Business Management and I had an internship abroad, working in international team with clients from all over Europe. However, what I missed in my education in order to be good international entrepreneur were practical cases on how to do business abroad. I recently discovered the book ‘Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands’ and I immediately bought it and started reading it. This book describes over 60 countries’ cultures, but also and mainly everything any business person needs to know before travelling to each of these countries to meet partners or clients. It explains for example how you should behave, it tells everything about etiquette in every country, in whether or not you should arrive early, on time or late et cetera. These are the things that I am most interested in regarding international business and the things I had hoped to learn during my education. Even though the education at Artevelde University College was practical enough, I would have liked to write less cases and reports and instead learn about specific things that I will actually keep in mind for the rest of my life. An example of this was a seminar we attended last year about how to do business in the US, I can still name almost everything I learned from that seminar while I hardly remember anything I heard in the other seminars we attended. 18 Annexes Itinerary MARK RICHARDS ITINERARY Friday May 18 2pm (pick up time) Stadium Tour A guide will pick you up at your accommodation and take you to the stadium and back afterwards. Sunday May 19 9pm FC Barcelona -­‐ Valladolid The best way to get to the stadium is to jump on the Green Line of the metro (L3), direction Zona Universitaria and get off at Les Corts, then just follow the crowd! Monday May 20 12pm Airport Return Transfer Our driver will pick you up at the same place he dropped you off on Saturday. Please make sure the group is ready as the driver is only allowed to park in the streets for a few minutes. We hope you have a great weekend, if you need to you can get a hold of us 24/7 at +34-­‐656 886 490 ! 19 Invoice 20