A endless journey begins...

Hello everyone,

It was a great pleasure to connect and share my views and experiences about my internship at Paradise Cove Boutique Hotel with you all. I would like to first of all thank my supervisor, my colleagues and all the management team of the hotel for having made my stay a memorable one. I have been very lucky when I got asked if I wanted to extend my training among them by the general manager. I am still part of my training journey at the hotel. I feel lucky to have a golden chance of expanding my knowledge and work experiences. I can furthermore be as a participant observer and also contribute to the working place. I also feel inspired by several blogs I read whereby they shared their experience and also help you guide you on how to be effective, productive , tell you even how different organisations function. It also gets you thinking of what if you got to work in such different category of organisation.

It helps to know how it would be like to be in such environment or specific field. As my journey is still going on as a Guest relations Trainee, I really look forward every day to learn something new in the tourism industry. This part is quite exciting and can never be a boredom for me as u always expect new things coming to your way as a lesson, as a reward or a lifetime experience.

I would rather say that PR internship was a cherry on the icing cake for my three year course degree; a door to another world of experience! On an ending note, I am sharing a few pictures of the hotel, I captured during my internship. Thanks for reading.

Front view of the hotel entrance

Hotel main entrance 

lobby

Private Jetty departure for sailing boats, Catamaran Cruise

By Tina Devi Halkhoree

Curtin Student - Charles Telfair Institute Campus, Mauritius

I.D. Number:17480767

Turning two Lovers’ dreams into reality with wedding knots.

The Famous quote as we say “Marriages are planned in heaven and celebrated on Earth”

At Paradise Cove Boutique Hotel, I got the opportunity to form part of the planning process of different weddings. It was a heartfelt and happy moment to witness those lovers turning into lifetime partners as legally husband and wife, creating memorable times of their lives.

As an intern of Guest Relations, I was assisting my colleagues while dealing with prospective hotel clients in planning their wedding at the hotel. Planning is said to be the mother of any successful event and also there’s a quote by Alan Lakein who says “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. It requires the wedding coordinator to deal with the future clients via mails and phone calls, if required, to plan accordingly to their choices. A wedding coordinator has to be multi-tasking at the venue as well as at the back-office in planning and finalizing the paper works for all bookings and payments.

First of all, there is a thread of emails followed by the wedding coordinator and all the necessary points are noted and filed accordingly. Legal procedures are done prior such as wedding applications. Furthermore, the prospective clients can also pre-book their activities they prefer to have on their wedding day and all the reservations will be affixed to all departments. Upon the arrival of the future bride and the groom, a meeting is fixed to confirm and alter any decisions taken and also take note any other additions to be made for the big day. And then the rest of the work goes to the coordinator whereby she will make a memo list with all the information included to inform each department concerned and their duties for the wedding day. For example, housekeeping is informed about the decorations the future couple opted for their honeymoon after marriage celebration, the kitchen is informed about which wedding cake has been selected and so on. There will also conduct meetings with the departments concerned for the smooth execution of the plan and avoid miscommunication.

The wedding day is quite on the move for the wedding coordinator and I assisted her in making the venue arrangements, floral decorations, keeping the checklists ticked with all tasks completed. We were also available for bride’s help in getting ready at the make-up room of the Spa centre. Then we accompanied the bride, walking the aisle to the wedding venue. An officer for the Civil marriage bureau is present to do the official procedures. Musicians , photographer and a video recorder were present inclusive of their selected package. The wedding went smoothly with lovely music accompanied by the musician. Later on the photographer stayed late for the wedding photo-shoot.

I felt privileged to form part of the planning and I also got the opportunity to talk to the couple. The part I appreciated the most was that I was a participant observant at the wedding. It helped me gain a real life experience as well as improving and getting better in communication skills.

I am attaching some of the pictures captured of the golden moments of different weddings, sharing their heartfelt joyous occasion.
(All approval received from the clients before using their pictures.)

By Tina Devi Halkhoree

Curtin Student - Charles Telfair Institute Campus, Mauritius

I.D. Number: 17480767

Management Cocktail Experience is always thrilling!

My experience at Paradise Cove Boutique Hotel has been very fruitful and enriching. I could not have thought of a better place than that as I was warm-welcomed by the front office department and its members. I was well-groomed by the Frontline manager and have gained help and support from my Guest Relations team members of Frontline department. I was assigned to be a Guest Relations trainee of the Guest Relations Department.

One of my most favorite experiences has been the Management cocktail which is held every Wednesdays where you get the opportunities to connect personally with the guests and socialize with them. The purpose of holding the Management Cocktail weekly was an opportunity for all the departmental managers and the guest relations staff and most importantly the general manager to socialize with the external members. (Hotel clients are termed as external members/ guests at the hotel.) All the staff are to communicate with each and every guest to gather feedback of their stay as well as to take note of their recommendations to further improve the hotel service. By performing this activity by all our staff, it helps us know our external members individually and if ever they would like something to be tailored according to their preferences in their service.

Being a Curtin student, I found this platform to be a golden opportunity to practice my graduate attributes such as performing good communication skills with tourists from all around the world, having an international perspective, cultural understanding for others and also show my efficiency of working individually and as a team which fall under professional skills. I also got the chance to apply my thinking and information skills while dealing with different people of different backgrounds and cultures. It helped me enrich and broaden your knowledge while applying principles learnt in new situations. My duties and responsibilities were to conform to all the hotel standards and their 20 basic attributes yet blending in my personal touch as an individual outperforming my graduate attributes I have been exposed during my three year course.

Left side: Myself with the Guest Relations Coordinator and Right side with a staff member with traditional Indian attire.

Another highlight of the cocktail party is to introduce our variety of Mauritian specialty beverages such as rum - based cocktails inspired by our bar specialists, local house wines and also international beverages and local homemade snacks. And the surprise of the night is the local Mauritian live Sega dance by our local troupe. Its aim is to spark the holidays with fun and excitement for our external members with live entertainment and also ice breaking atmosphere to dance with other external guests. They are also taught a few steps of the typical Sega dance and introduced with the local instruments used for the performance. A Spa therapist is also present by the pool side to give the external guests a 2-3 minutes complimentary massage to relax themselves and also promote the spa services.

I would like to share a few pictures taken with approval during the Management cocktail of my experience as a Guest Relations Trainee.      

Live Sega dance Show

                                          

Managers and staff are at service of the guests.

Guests learning few steps of the Traditional Sega dance

References:

Paradise Cove Hotel,. 2016. Paradisecovehotel.Com. http://www.paradisecovehotel.com/en/album/.

Pictures used were taken and approved by the person depicted in the picture.

By Tina Devi Halkhoree

Curtin Student - Charles Telfair Institute Campus, Mauritius

I.D. Number:17480767

Facebook = everything gets culled

Here I was thinking that doing some Facebook posts for a company would be easy. Here I was thinking this would be a quick task, something I could breeze through. After all, I see them on a daily basis posted by the companies and organisations I follow. I occasionally update my own Facebook status - this should really be too easy. WRONG. This is not easy; this is a time consuming and meticulous job that makes you look like a slacker because you have Facebook open on your web browser. I had no idea the time and effort that went into just drafting a Facebook post. This probably sounds ridiculous, but you jump through quite a few hoops to have a potential post maybe published.

Your client

First of all, you must consider the client you are writing for. Which probably seems obvious but that means you need to understand you client. You need to consider what they would find appropriate. You must make sure you aren’t doubling up on posts because that is repetitive and their audience will get bored.

Target Audience

This brings me to their target audience. When you are creating the posts, you need to think about how the client wants to be positioned, and you need to think about what the consumer would find interesting, informative, or fun – what ever it is that you’re going for. After all, we are fighting for that little bit of attention from the same groups of people within our market segment. We need something that will stop the client or potential client in their tracks, and get them to like/share/follow us.

Keep it interesting

Which brings me to interesting posts. Go and find something interesting. When you are posting on behalf of the same clients week after week, it gets tough to find new and interesting things, I can promise you this. I found myself searching for hours, digging through news articles, “why you should” articles, fascinating or thought provoking images. When I was at a loss I’d see what the competition was doing, and try to do one better, yet stay ahead of the game. 

Everything gets culled

Then after everything, you put your research together, present it with some catchy titles and submit it to your editor/marketing manager (whoever). They go through what you’ve done, cull half of it, knowing exactly what the client is looking for, and you’ll find some of your hard work is posted. Don’t even bother looking at the number of likes you get, because then you might never want to do it again, except for the times you get a few hundred likes, that’s always rewarding. 

It’s a crazy world, the social media world. We scroll past these posts on Facebook or Instagram like they’re nothing at all. What we don’t consider is that poor intern who researched all of that information for us. We look it over in two seconds if it has a nice picture, and go on with our days and forget about it. Hard world isn’t it? It makes me question the effectiveness of social media, but for some organisations it really works. We just all seem to be fighting for the attention of consumers, and they just really don’t seem to care. There is so much to choose from, so why would they?

Emergency calls only

So this is the end, my last day as intern at Arcadia Travel. I must admit that even though I am thrilled to get at least one week of holiday before going back to university, I will miss Port Louis and this great team made of amazing people. They’ve taught me more about work, communication, the importance of sharing and the significance of a simple “thank you” than I could imagine.

Port-Louis is the hemisphere of work. Every corner, shop, café or alleyway is imprinted in this ambiance, it is something I’ll never forget. Obviously, anyone who knows a tiny bit about Mauritius, knows this but still being part of this working group is something else, it’s incredible.

I have learnt the real value in practice of a PR plan. It requires more than what I previously believed it did, in-depth research at all levels, concise objectives, a complete and detailed timeline and thorough evaluation amongst others. The plan doesn’t even feel like hard work when the goal is so very concrete.

But as promised, the internship proved to be a lifetime experience. I learnt valuable lessons about public relations, I created numerous connections with people that helped me and that might help me later on and I acquired the very unique skill of working with colleagues which is not simple I assure you. There’s a whole list of experiences that helped me grow personally and professionally and I will be forever grateful for this opportunity.

But for now, I am packing all the paperwork in a pretty little yellow plastic pocket and enjoying my unique and final week of holidays.

x

Gaëlle

Entering the unknown void of healthcare communications.... ALONE!

My name is Fay Ulrica, and I am doing my 20 day internship at Mill Street Medical Practice and Travel Medicine Centtre Perth. That’s right, two medical facilities, privately owned and managed by my mentor, Dr. Stanley Khoo.

Everyone expects an internship to provide wonderful and valuable experience. I had this in mind the whole time as I entered the clinic doors into Mill Street Medical Practice (MSMP), co-located with the Travel Medicine Centre Perth (TMCP). The best of two medical worlds in one. I have to admit, I was very intimidated, but I knew my course has prepared me well and even more so for this internship.

I came into the placement with a lot of hopes, and a yearn to learn. Allthough my placement leans towards the medical field of science, I saw it as an opportunity to learn more about health, science, and the general world of medicine. The wide and clean glass doors brought me into a large waiting room. The receptionist, Kym Beers, greeted me with a warm smile. The waiting room was tidy, and spacious, which had a minimalist look and feel to it. Kym offered me a drink as I waited for Dr. Stanley Khoo, my new supervisor and mentor.

Unlike other students, I am interning for Dr. Stanley Khoo, clinic manager for both MSMP and TMCP, located on 5 Mill Street in the heart of Perth CBD. Man, was I nervous. As I stared into the oblivion of the large aquarium in front of me, I felt like an anxious patient waiting to see the doctor.

Alas, our meeting went well. Better than I expected. I came prepared with a list of public relations activities to encourage relationships, start conversations, and begin word of mouth reccommendation among publics. A few solutions that I brought to the table was to increase the web presence, online toops, sophisticated communications planning, and to create a sustained brand management for both clinis.

I added to Dr. Stanley that both MSMP and TMCP have the potential to be one of the best medical facilities in Perth CBD as they provide extensive services to patients and travellers in one convenient location.

Healthcare is changing more rapidlty than almost any other field. My internship in this placement allowed me to apply my public relations principles learned from university into the healthcare environment. Times are changing and we have to adapt to the techniques to suit the desired end goals of an organization. Securing communications in a healthcare/clinical environment can serve as a foundation for a strong positive relationship among patients, improves population health outcomes, advances health care quality, generate exposure, etc

The list goes on.

We live in a hugely exciting time for the industry of Public Relations. As for myself, I am very fortunate to have Dr. Stanley as my mentor, a commited, very well organized, and passionate doctor with such an incredible wealth of knowledge! His ideas for using marketing and public relations to make a purposeful online presence is in line with what I was planning to work on during my internship.

With the rise of the Internet, medical practices such as Mill Street Medical Practice and Travel Medicine Centre Perth should hop on board the web presence express, or be left behind to pick up the pieces.

Till next time! Stay tuned !

Be willing to do what’s hard now to enjoy what’s beautiful later!

Hello everyone,

I think that it will so peculiar to be back being a normal student now: over crawling with assignments! Besides, my internship has finally come to an end and is unfortunately over since Monday. I guess I am happy it’s over because I finally finished the twenty days as required in the unit outline and sad because I am going to miss those working days though some of them were quite exhausting.

However, I must say that I have learnt a lot through these 20 days of internship. You might say that 20 days is far too trifling for an internship in the PR field but trust me, I have learnt and experienced a lot through these days. Besides, it was a real pleasure to work at PROAKTIV PR and to work with its beautiful people. They have welcomed me in their team and share their knowledge of the PR field with me and I think that this was the best part of the internship. Learning from experienced people is always best.  

You cannot imagine the number of projects that I worked on and how many time spent on doing these but what I know is I did it with every little bit of motivation that I had and enjoyed the results. Adding to that the number of things that needs to be written and proof read such as press releases, mails, official mails, press invitations, quotations, etc... But they say hard work always pays and furthermore, practice makes perfect! So let's work hard now today to enjoy what’s beautiful later! 

However, I can tell you that by now I have learnt that the working work is not always tough as I first imagine it would be. But as you may know, every little things has both good sides and bad sides. You just have to stay focus, do your research work well and meet the deadlines. Besides, you just have to take the best of it, make the most of it and take it positively.

I would like to thank you all for reading and sharing your personal views with me. In some cases, it has been very entertaining reading your posts and your experiences at your workplace and finding that we happened to have the same issues, in others, it has been more helpful and useful for my day to day routine. 

It was a real pleasure to share my personal experience with you people.

Cordially,

Keshya S. Rassen.