The Eye Opening Moments...

Have anyone ever heard of  or join Borneo Jazz festival? Here's comes a new festival which we call Miri Country Music Festival (MCMF). The 1st MCMF is held on 15th February 2014 organize by UCSI Communication and support by Sarawak Tourism Board. My placement organization- ParkCity Everly Hotel Miri (PEHM) is the main sponsor and official hotel for the event. I'm just in time to have my internship in this hotel to see how people prepare for this big event and the communication with the bands, media and sponsors. However, I didn't get the chance to prepare press releases for this big event as the organizer itself is a communication company; which is too bad for me.

Media Clipping for MCMF 2014

On the big day, we were so busy checking the set up for the place and I need to finalize my own counter set up before the event start at 2pm. I'm having my own counter selling ice-cream and stuffs in order for children to redeem ice-cream with their ticket. As the hotel have too many stalls to take care of, the ice-cream redemption counter was outsourced to me and another colleague.  I'm on the ground standby for the beverage counter at the garden area due to the fact that I also need to take care of my own ice-cream counter. I'm lucky enough to get my brother and friends to help at my stall so I can go to help at the beverage counter when I can see many people 'attack' the counter.

Friends help out at my ice-cream counter

I enjoyed the atmosphere at that night. Instead of working, I feel like we are there to make friend with our guests. It's a very good chance to build relationship with the guests and keep our hotel remembered. As a public relations practitioner and salespersons, we are like a signboard of an organization. Thus, in order to make the organization memorable, I try to be as helpful as possible and I found out that even small things that we do for our customers, it brings us closer. For example when I offer to help the customers to send the drinks that they bought from our counter to their table, they are so happy and keep praising that we provided very good service.

Few days before I end my internship with PEHM, I'm also been lucky enough to be called by our General Manager, Mr John to join the Strategic Planning sessions attended by all Department Heads. It's really an eyes-opening moment for me to experience how hotel do their strategic planning. I joined an interesting brainstorming session where everyone have a say towards what they see, hear and experience in the daily operation. Then we will rank how our hotel perform in each area to three categories which are "Very Well", "Well", and "Not Well". During this session, I also can see how is teamwork grow between departments.

Brainstorming session in small group

Throughout this Strategic Planning session, I feel that what we have learned in university are being utilize and it's use for real life planning. I also witness how the Mission Statement and Market Product Scope statement being developed. The Hotel Manager, Mr Mok also explain to me that the strategic planning is very important in planning for the strategy and action plan as well as come out with budget for the whole year. Thus, our hotel always start at the beginning of the year for the next year planning. After the session, we had tea break and share our feeling on the discussion.

Tea break with my senior Ms Maduna (left) and my manager Mdm Blenda (middle)

And to end my internship experience with ParkCity Everly Hotel Miri, I would like to say, working in the hotel is ALL ABOUT NICE FOOD!

Some of the Dishes we had in the Strategic Meeting dinner

Grace Chia
Curtin Miri, Sarawak
15647544