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

Ultilise Your 'Hardware'

My internship almost comes to its end by now, but I never stop feeling how important it is to love what you are doing or we said 'your job'. I have to admit that working life is exhausted, yet I'm filled with the satisfaction of seeing things that I done. From the beginning when I feel things are difficult till how I can handle a couple of works at a time, I have to say, sometimes, we are just underestimate ourselves. However, we can't expect we have something to do every minute during the working hours. Remember the 'software and hardware' thingy I mentioned in my second blog post? This is the time you show your 'hardware' by proactively taking up some of the responsibility. And believe or not, you colleague and superiors actually VERY VERY appreciate it. As a person who feel very uneasy to just sit there and doing nothing, I would usually go to my seniors and ask if there is anything I can help them to do. In the case of they are not around or nothing that I can help, I will find myself something to do. For example, I just done updating the customers' contact list till end of 2013 with the quotations that we sent out to the clients in the year of 2013. Yeah... If you are thinking 'My God! How much quotations can that be?' Yeah... you are right! It's really A LOT...

Just when I start my internship, I already know that we will be having our hotel's Annual Staff Dinner 2013 on 19th January. I have been help out in doing the event planning and preparation ever since I start to work in PEHM. By now, we have come to the final stage of finalize our sponsors, the lucky draw prizes, programs and also prepare invitation cards as well as door gifts for our owners and staffs. Hence, most of my job these day is follow up on the sponsorship status and update the sponsors' list. I also help to arrange the lucky draw sequence according to its value and pack the door gift.

The Door Gifts waiting to be 'pack'

Invitation cards on the delivery

On the PEHM Annual Staff Dinner night, it's the best time I make good use of my 'hardware' to mix around and acquaint more people which maybe useful in our future. We all had fun on that night. To explain how much fun we had, I think picture explain better than words.

Add caption

One of the game: Blindfold and make-up

Best Dress (Male & Female)

Share to me you experience if you are fortunate enough to join the annual dinner of your placement organisation as well. Cheers!

Grace Chia
Curtin Miri, Sarawak
15647544

Sales, Marketing, Public Relations - All in One!

After having internship in my placement organisation- PackCity Everly Hotel Miri for one month, I start to understand that as an organisation which do not have a specific PR department, everyone is a PR practitioner in the hotel. The PR tasks are divided among the departments and person-in-charge according to the capability of one and another. There are no clear line between sales, marketing and PR job scope. "It's all about common sense!" this is the sentence I heard the most from my managers. They always advice me that what we learn in the university is only 'software' which we can 'top up' or change at anytime but what is important is the 'hardware', which is our personality. If your personality is attractive and you are willing to learn, the Degree that you have is just an added-on advantage for you; and I agreed that throughout my internship period till now.

As a intern for Sales and Marketing department, I also do part of the communication process particularly towards maintaining relationship with our clients. When Christmas is just around the corner, I helped my managers to prepare the list of regular clients that we need to send gift-away for and arrange with the pastry and kitchen to prepare the items such as turkey and cakes. Besides, we also start practice for Christmas songs one week before we go to our owners' office- Samling Group to do Christmas Caroling. 

During the practice in our hotel's Ruai Lounge

 

On the Christmas Eve Day, we brought lucky draw prizes and nice foods to Samling headquarter office to entertain the staffs with Christmas songs and lucky draw session. This is the first time I can sing so many Christmas songs in front of a hall-fulled of people and I can really feel that it's Christmas!

 

Christmas Caroling at Samling office

In addition, on the Christmas Day, we also entertain our hotel guest with our Christmas songs in few places in the hotel included the lobby, the lounge and the coffee house. We also have Santa Clause to go around to give sweets to the kids while we are singing.

Entertaining our hotel guests with Christmas songs at the Coffee House

Time flies, when I didn't even realize, 2014 is here. On the morning we just come back to work after the New Year public holiday, I met my General Manager and he just stand in front of me and stared at me. Just before I realize what is going on, he said "Girl! You haven't greet me 'Happy New Year'." Then, I just aware that as a Public Relations student, people expect more from us especially when it comes to festive celebration, we are expect to be more alert towards those festive greeting not only to greet our superior but most importantly our clients.

Grace Chia

Curtin Miri, Sarawak

15647544

The adventure begins...

“Oh my god, am I late?!” with this sentence in mind, I started my internship in ParkCity Everly Hotel Miri, Sales and Marketing department anxiously. 2^nd of December is the 1^st day I start to work. I arrived in the office at 8.40am expect to be just in time as I’m being told earlier that the office start to work at 9am. However, when I enter the office, it was empty! I was standing there feeling very uneasy as I can hear sound people having discussion in the meeting room. I walk out to the reception counter and being told that they are having a morning briefing and it may take one hour. The reception offered me to be seated in the lobby and wait for them to come out from the meeting room. The one hour waiting time is so long and I can feel my sweat at my back.

Finally, I’m being asked to go into the office. As year end is usually the peak season of the hotel, all the salespersons are extremely busy. As a sales and marketing intern, I’m on my own as all of my seniors and superior have urgent tasks. After that I received some forms used for daily operations and notes from senior to familiarize with what I will be doing for the next three months in PackCity Everly Hotel Miri.

I've been lucky enough to join the 67th Staff Gathering on my 1st day as well. During the staff gathering, the General Manager giving some advice and motivation to the staff with regards to the work performance and how they can improve on it. I feel that's a very good internal communication moment where all staff can communicate directly to the top management at this point of time. After that, all the new staffs who have just joined the company are invited to give self introduction on the stage. As a intern who just joined the company, I'm also been called to go up to the stage to introduce myself. It's of course a big surprise to me as I didn't expect my name to be call. However, I'm very thankful that it's just a gentle sharing session where dialogue is going on between the staff on the stage and on the floor which makes me less nervous.

We also having birthday celebration for staff whose birthday fall on November and December. It's a very warm moment to me as I can feel that how an organization treat the employees like family members and I believe this will definitely be one of those reasons good employees stay with the company rather that monetary and some other benefits. And, of course, we have plenty of nice and tasty foods on that day!

The Birthday's Staff for November and December

The Nice Foods!

During the first two weeks of my internship period, I realized that it's very important to keep learning in our life's journey. For example, pick up phone calls seem to be an easy thing to do but it actually can be embarrassing and need a lot of practices. I just found out that I can't even greet the other person from the phone properly! 

There is also exciting moments when I 1st saw my name on the event order or known as work order. That is a document which we use for internal communication between departments when we have events or functions. It's clearly stated what each department's job scope and responsibilities in the event.

 

 

 

 

 

This is how Event Order looks like

As PR students, we are all familiarize with Media Kit which we prepare for media outlets before or during events; yet it's the 1st time that I know that we also have something that we call 'Sales Kit' which we prepare for exhibition or fair. During my internship period, there is a 'Buyer Meet Sellers' fair organize by Sarawak Tourism Board going on which ParkCity Everly Hotel participated. I'm been instructed by my Sales Manager in helping to prepare the Sales Kit for her and it's the first time I found there is some similarity in Sales and Public Relations.

Sales Kit and its Contents

Grace Chia
15647544