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

Balancing our professional and personal lives

What a coincidence that the first day of my internship falls on my birthday! It is very hard to balance both professional and personal lives. When we do start a new job, we often ask ourselves, “Is it OK to have a close relationship with our colleagues?” or “is it OK to add them on Facebook?” One of the dilemmas of modern life is how to manage one’s connections’ and relationships’ on social media. The big question is how do we separate our professional lives from our personal lives?

Ideally, it is better to keep both areas separated but it is hard to achieve that. We all use the same brain in every situation. How will you switch off some regions of your brain depending on the surroundings? My experience is that it is all mixed up.

Professionalism is fundamental in this case. Once you start connecting with colleagues, especially on Facebook, you will want to maintain a professional presence and not forget the responsibilities you have for the company, but of course, you might still want to share those crazy party photos and, in my case, birthday celebrations.

In order to separate your work network from your friends, you will want to create friend lists. At minimum, you will want to create a list with the people you work with. You can use this list to post updates that are only to be shared with your work colleagues, but more importantly, you can use this list to post updates that are to be hidden from work colleagues. You may also want to add mutual friends of yours and your work colleagues to that list as some updates are shared to friends of friends as well.

At the end of the day, it is up to you to make the judgement of whether to mix business with pleasure. Everyone is different and have different backgrounds and work ethics. Just do what you think it’s right for you.

X Hannah

Goodbye and a tiny cactus

I’m finished! It was 10 of the toughest weeks of my life trying to juggle my internship, my usual job and three other uni units – but it was one of the most important and uplifting career experiences I’ve had.

Here are some of important nuggets of wisdom I’ve learnt through my internship at LiveLighter that I’d like to pass on to you all:

1. By August this year, Facebook will make changes to reduce newsfeed "clutter" from organisation's pages. This will mean that organisations' posts will have next to no organic reach. This essentially means that organisations (both businesses and not-for-profits) will have to pay to boost almost all of the Facebook content they post, rather than relying on it being organically shared to their followers and through likes and shares to non-followers. This will mean that organisation’s Facebook posts will likely become less frequent, but more professional. Social media managers will have to consider the organisational benefits of each Facebook post (as they are putting money behind it) and will have to be looking more closely at KPIs to make sure their Facebook posts are worth the financial investment. These changes will likely impact you just as you’re starting to get jobs at the end of this year – so keep this in mind.

2.       2.  A useful exercise to ‘sharpen’ an organisation’s social media presence is to come up with a very specific profile of a hypothetical person who fits into your target audience. For LiveLighter, the Comms team came up with the hypothetical person “Tracey Turner.” Tracey is a mum in her late forties, works as a part-time receptionist at her local tyre power, likes Take 5 magazine and Today Tonight, and has tried a number of different diet programs but keeps putting the weight back on. Before creating a Facebook post we would have to think “how can I make this post appeal to Tracey?” which helped us to make sure we were creating content that was actually engaging our target audience.

3.       3. Pay attention to who’s liking your content on different social media platforms. LiveLighter’s Facebook was mostly middle-aged women who were looking to make lifestyle changes for themselves and their family, whereas LiveLighter’s Twitter following was mostly health professional looking for resources to share with their patients and clients. We had to tailor different posts for each platform to cater for these specific audiences.

4.       4. Bring a notepad and pen with you everywhere! You may think you can remember everything that’s discussed in a meeting, or all the points your manager wants you to include in the media release, but I can assure you that you won’t. Good note-taking will ensure you’re not annoying people by asking them to repeat what they said.

5.      5.  Blogging is still a thing. I’ve had many blogging-based assignments for my Internet Communications degree and always complained that nobody still reads blogs. But they actually do – LiveLighter’s health advice blog is one of their most successful social media platforms.

6.      6.  Only wear dresses and skirts you’d be comfortable climbing up stairs in to your internship. If it’s going to shimmy up your thighs as you’re climbing, leave it in the wardrobe.

7.     7.   I’d also recommend getting your mentor and other team members you worked closely with a small present to say thank-you for taking you on as an intern. It leaves a positive lasting impression of you as a worker and person. I got everyone in my team a bunch of flowers, and they got me a tiny cactus (I know you were wondering how the cactus comes into it).

Thank you for reading my blog posts. I'll continue to follow your internship adventures.

All the best,

Bec

Stakeholder communications can be fun and engaging (here’s how)

I thought the media launch for the new LiveLighter TVCs would be the most interesting event I’d attend as part of my internship, but I had no idea how great the stakeholder launch would be!

The purpose of the stakeholder launch was to introduce LiveLighter’s stakeholders to the new TVCs, as well as the new resources (cookbooks, leaflets, online resources, merchandise). The stakeholders were mostly from other health promotion agencies that use LiveLighter’s messages and resources in their work, and governing bodies like Healthway and PHAIWA (Public Health Advocacy Institute of WA).

Before the actual stakeholder launch, I got to sit in on another interview for the H+M (Health + Medicine) liftout in the West Australian. This time the interview was with the two experts who we had as spokespeople for the new campaign – nutrition expert Professor Amanda Lee and gastroenterologist Associate Professor Leon Adams. Because the interviews were for H+M, the interviewees could go more in-depth with medical and nutrition science terminology and explanations than they could with their interviews at the media launch. This seemed to make both interviewees a lot more at ease, as they didn’t have to worry about dumbing-down the science (which is much harder to do than you’d think).

My job for the stakeholder launch was to live tweet the event. It was the first time I’d done a live-tweet and it was quite exhilarating (in a PR dork kind of way). We’d stuck posters all around the lecture theatre with LiveLighter’s twitter handle and the hashtag for the launch (#junkfree), and encouraged any Twitter users present to live tweet the event as well. We had a number of the attendees participating in the live tweet, including guest speaker Amanda Lee. I had to think on my toes and let go of my perfectionist tendencies when doing the live tweet. My engaged twitter audience was seeing things at the same time as me, so I had to make sure I tweeted things in real time.

After my experience, my advice for anyone doing a professional live tweet for the first time is:

-        -   Try and memorise exactly what the speaker is saying as they say it – verbatim quotes are perfect for live tweeting

-        -   If possible, ask the speakers for a copy of their PowerPoint before the presentation – it looks much better to tweet a screenshot of a slide than a photo of it being projected on a screen

-       - Ask key players (eg. Campaign director, guest speakers) to get involved on their personal accounts – some audiences members may be more comfortable to tweet their questions rather than ask them in front of a room full of people

I have to share a photo of the creative healthy catering for the event – fruit pizzas in pizza boxes, veggies sticks and dip in chip buckets and mushroom “cheeseburgers.” The catering at a health promotion event is always under a lot of scrutiny and LiveLighter cleverly tied it into their junk food theme.

I think one of the main reasons of I enjoyed the stakeholder launch so much was the sense of being a part of a committed team. The whole LiveLighter team (not just the Comms staff) pitched in to help with the event and it ran like clockwork because there were so many hands on deck.

On a slight tangent, I’ve noticed that because Communications (and health promotion as well) are female dominated industries, a large percentage of the staff are part-time. This had presented me with some challenges regarding whether it’s crossing professional boundaries to text/email co-workers with a work-related question if it’s their day off, and has made me appreciate how difficult it is to schedule a team meeting when everyone works different days.

What do you think about the work-force having greater part-time flexibility? Is it better for families/post-graduate study opportunities, or impacting workplace productivity?

Until next time,

Bec

The media launch! How we unveiled our new advertisements with PR flair

On Sunday we had the media launch for the new LiveLighter TVcommericals, which was an important learning experience to say the least!

We’d hoped to get as many Perth metro news outlets to the event as possible for an advanced preview of the new TV commercials, as well as presentations and interview opportunities with health and nutrition experts. We’d hoped to secure a lot of media coverage around the new ads so that viewers would see them and go “oh – these are the ads that everyone’s been talking about” and watch them more actively. We had also hoped to get some public discussion going about Australia’s junk food consumption and some follow-up media elicited by the initial news stories (talk-back radio often repeats stories that are in that day’s newspaper).  

The media launch event really drove home to me how unreliable the media can be. We originally had four media outlets confirm that they were coming to the event, but channel 7 were the only station that showed up. The West Australian couldn’t make it, but asked for a voice recording of the presentation (alongside the general media release). Here are some photos of the media launch set-up:

 Prop from the filming of the new advertisements made a great feature decoration

 Our display of situations where people often eat junk food (eg, had to stay late at work, 3pm pick-me-up, etc.) to show frequency of Australians' junk food consumption

Set-up of the room for the media launch

In the end we got a couple of media mentions from the launch: a short piece on Channel 7 Sunday night news (which has a very high viewership), an article on page 7 of the West Australian (below) and an online article on the West’s website on Monday morning.

It was interesting to see how the different news outlets went with different news angles based on the same media release and launch – channel 7 focused on the new ads being shocking and “graphic”, whereas the West Australian went with the new link between fatty liver disease and obesity as their angle. I think the way LiveLighter’s PR manager wrote the media release was highly effective, as there was lots of newsworthy content within it, which allowed different equally-newsworthy angles to be used by the media. This is a technique that I’d like to employ in my future media release writing.

Immediately after the media launch, we had a photoshoot with a family we were hoping to have as the focus of a Sunday Times article about ways families can avoid junk food. It’s true what they say: don’t work with animals or kids! It took around an hour to get the shot we needed because the kids couldn’t keep still and were getting very bored and impatient. We ended up getting the shot, but not needing it because the Sunday Times now wants a story about a family going on a “challenge” to quit junk food, rather than a family that’s already very healthy. Again, working with the media can be somewhat frustrating at times. I wrote the pitch for the Sunday Times article, so am still pretty stoked that the PR manager liked my work enough to pitch it to the media.

I'd love to hear about other people's media experiences so far, feel free to leave a comment.

Until next time,

Bec