The Royal Experiences at the Races

Setting the racecourse for the Melbourne Cup is an exhausting task to do especially when you have some royalty coming over. The Dutch Royals decided to visit us to watch the Melbourne Cup and the local races. I felt excited as the only royalty I experienced was a Burger King drive-through (joke).

I was assigned to lead the team to set the Chairman's Suite as the Dutch Royal will be staying there. My Manager gave me a list of things that needs to be in the suite as require by the Royals. We set the venue for about 5 hours making use that venue, silverware, glassware and furniture are spotless conditions. About 4 pm, a representative of the Royals rock up to check the venue and took note what are the things we need to change. So we put another couple of hours in complying for those things as specified by Royal representative. 

Melbourne Cup Day - Everyone at work dress up and ready to welcome the Dutch Royals. Perth Racing also provided notice slip and audio announcement for patrons and members about the presence of the Dutch Royals. Everything went really well and I felt that I contributed something to make sure that the Dutch Royals had a great time at Ascot Racecourse. 

This experience gave me idea that each clientele has different service expectation. As an event and function professionals, we should be flexible and accommodating to comply with our guest expectations to gain a good reputation. 

  

     

     

Employees Relations: Building Team Spirit and Motivation

As I was assigned to be an Event and Function Supervisor, I need to deal with directing staff about things that need to accomplish before, during and after an event or function. Achieving those things requires good communication and relationship with your staff. 

Communication is vey important in running an event and function. It provides and disseminate required information needed. This information pass through different people that involves to making things happens. Specification will be provided by clienteles to Marketing Department and liaise with the operations. Frontline staff are the deal maker or breaker so we need to make sure that information are provided and also confirm staff understanding (briefing process). Communication required monitoring to make sure that messages are understood and applied. Feedback as a tool in making sure that goals and objectives are met and utilise it for reflection to improvement performance.

Good workplace relationship with your colleague contributes productivity. This build a sense of team that have a common goal and objective. To achieve this, we need to make sure that we respect each other differences and create team values. As the supervisor, I need to maintain that harmony and understanding.

Combination of good communication and good workplace relationship create a positive atmosphere that help us in achieving our goals and objectives. I personally believed and experienced it how it contributes to maximisation of staff performance.

   

On a better ground...

After the all the bad experience I got with my previous internship I decided to do my internship at my work. I know the fact that this is too safe to do my internship however I believe that I will gain more doing my internship in Perth Racing. I work with them for 3 years and learnt a lot of thing in how to run events and functions. 

Laura Formby is our current Event and Function Manager. She has heaps of experiences in the field of event management and works at bigger event venues such as Perth Convention Centre, NIB Stadium, Domain Stadium, etc. She assigned me to be an Event and Function supervisor due to my work experiences with the organisation.

I have mix emotions of it as that’s a lot of commitment involve with managing event or function. I was excited about the job role as event managing is my passion but bit scared due to all the things I need to do to make sure the event run smoothly and address issues once occur. However, Laura trusts on my knowledge and skills that I can do. She added that I have a good customer relations skill as I demonstrate it to the clubs VIP members. 

Building a good relationship with clienteles is very important to event management. In my experience, this relationship contributes effective problem-solving and customer satisfaction. This understanding builds through time and acknowledging clienteles preference. This can achieve through observation, trends, face-to-face communication and past experiences. It amazes me that I personally did not recognise that I was building this good relationship with our clienteles. 

It's a good feeling that I have this placement with the company that I'm working with for 3 years. I feel more empower and acknowledged by the management and will not treat like a kid that do not know anything in life.  

Bad Blood...Internship went bad!

An internship is one of the most exciting units you can have as this is like giving you a real taste of the future profession you want to be. However, some organisations do this just to get free labour even they don't have a proper internship program. It is a very frustrating experience that’s what I can say.

I got this internship and started really well as I met the head volunteer and discussed what I can contribute to the organisation. She is happy about me as I have previous experiences in event managing that I can contribute to the organisation. I gave my availability and also asked is the organisation can provide an official email to communicate with prospective sponsors and donors. She said she will get back to me but did not happen. I tried to communicate with her using email and she sent me an email to just do things for her without any direction. I felt unhappy about it as I was expecting that I’ll get guidance with them about doing things but it’s just my wishful thought. I like working independently but without a clear vision where I’m heading is not a great feeling.

One day she sent an appeal letter and told to use that for getting donations or sponsors. However, I proofread the letter that was made by two interns also and said that this letter needs to be revised as information is too much in an appeal letter. I edited it and submitted to her and explain what are the problems in the first letter she sent. After this incident, I did not receive any email. I don’t know what happened but yes I did not receive any reply.

Seven days before submitting my performance appraisal form she sends me the email that she will transfer me to another organisation to do my internship. I was not happy about it and decided to contact the unit coordinator to move to another internship, which I got.

Lesson learnt that in searching internship experience, you need to make sure that the organisation should have an internship program in place and they are committed to giving you the experience that you're looking for.  

Last blog post

This is my forth and last blog post where I will reflect upon my experience during my internship. First of all, I was very happy to do my internship at the Mauritius Turf Club, something that I am passionate about and secondly, to have been able to complete at least 20 days of internship there. On the first day, I was asking myself whether I would be able to do 20 days of internship there or would I be up to the level? But I must say, during my 20 days of internship, I had the full support of my supervisor, his secretary and also my fellow colleagues who did not hesitate a moment to help me whenever I needed help as I was new in that department. In fact, I was sad when I knew my internship was coming to an end because I really liked what I was doing and how I wish if I could stay for some 4-5 more days or even more. I was doing my internship, working and doing something, which I like in an industry, which I love. Every morning when I had to wake up to go to internship, I would do it with pleasure.

Third blog post

The first project, which I have worked on, was the South African Horseracing Industry’s meeting, which sponsored The Princess Margaret Cup, a semi-classic race. I had to verify the contracts of the sponsors, whether they paid the amount, which they had to pay when they signed the contract for them to be given the naming rights of the races and I also had to verify the invoices whether the sponsors who already made the payments had an invoice and for those sponsors which already made the payments but did not have an invoice, an invoice had to be issued to them. I never knew that the MTC had to do all this, I never even though about it. I did not know that there was all this to do behind the organisation of horseraces. To be frank, I was a little surprised when I knew that the Communication and Events and Marketing department of the Mauritius Turf Club had to do all this, I never thought of it from that angle, I have always looked at the MTC as a horseracing organiser which has got to do more with racing related stuffs than these marketing tasks.

Second blog post

When I knew that I was having Public Relations Internship unit this semester, I absolutely has no idea where I would be doing my internship and certainly not the Mauritius Turf Club, this thought never crossed my mind as I knew that they do not have a Public Relations department but when I talked to the Communications and Events Manager, he said that he would do the needful for me and finally, I started to do my internship where deep-down I really wanted to. I started my internship on a Monday, during the first tuition-free week of the semester and this week coincided with the Maiden because the Maiden Cup would be run on the following Sunday and I started my internship on Monday, that is 6 days away from the Maiden. To start my internship, I was given the Princess Margaret Cup to work on, which was sponsored by the South African Horseracing Industry, which would be run in two weeks, but I was also given some Maiden-related tasks to do as there was also the Draw Ceremony for the Maiden Cup which was held 4 days prior to the Maiden and I finally attended this event both as an intern and as a staff of the Studio of the Mauritius Turf Club.