Goway Travel

Placement organization

Name of organization: Goway Travel
Town/city: Sydney
Country: Australië
Website: http://www.goway.com.au/

Name of student: Marit Uppelschoten

Specialist area: MT
Placement period: 2013-2014

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Tour opertor.
Organization’s activities: Goway Travel is a touroperator that arranges holidays for the European, North American and Latin Market. These are holidays with Australia or new Zealand as destination.
Target group of the organization: European, North American and Latin Market. Most people travelling are 50 years or older.
Company culture: Informal. Everyone talks to each other and is very friendly. You can always ask questions and the general managers office is always open and everyone is called by their first name.
Number of employees: 27 employees in the Sydney office there are also offices in Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles
Dress code: formal
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes they did.

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? The first month of my internship I worked in the documents department to get to know the system. The rest of my internship I worked in the reservations department.
Brief description of your daily activities: In the documents department I had to make sure that the clients got their documents. I had to send the documents to their agent. Every client gets an itinerary of their trip and the vouchers for their hotels. Some clients do a self drive and than they get a backpack with itinerary, vouchers, maps and brochures. I had to pack the backpacks and send them of. I also had to make the itineraries and make sure that they were correct.

In the reservations department I had to enter new bookings and make sure that every booking got confirmed at the end of the day. If I hadn’t received the confirmation by the end of the day I had to chase to hotel to get it. If a property was unable to accommodate the guests than I have to search for an alternative.

Brief description of your company assignment: For my company assignment I had to answer the following question:

What experiences are Europeans looking for in an Australian holiday?

Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: My supervision was okay. But you have to be very independent because you get treated as an employee and not as an intern they really see you as one of the team. My supervisor is very nice but she is very busy so she doesn’t have a lot of time for you but if you have questions you can always ask her. You have to come to her with problems because otherwise they think you are doing just fine.

If I had questions I would just ask them and If I encountered any problems I would just ask for help so for me the supervison was fine.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Independent, Team player, responsible, stress-proof
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office
English: Advanced
Spanish: Basic
French: Basic
German: Basic
Italian: Basic
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? I arranged the accomodation myself. The first week I stayed in a hostel. I already did some reserach back home so I went to check out one student accomodation and that was fine. I could move in the next day so that was pretty easy.
How did you go to work every day? I had to walk 10/15 minutes to the station and than I had to travel 15 minutes by train.

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? Yes, you need a Working Holiday
Do you need a work permit? No working Holiday is fine.
How did you arrange the necessary documents: I arranged it throug the Australian gouvernment website.
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? I got my visa within 4 days.
Did you need certain vaccinations? No
How long in advance? –

Language course

Did you take a language course before you started your placement? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? no that is not necesarry.

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 1400
Accommodation (monthly): € 345
Local transport (monthly): € 100
General costs of living (monthly): € 800
Costs of visa: € 200
Costs of work permit: € –
What did the company pay for/to you? The company paid for my flight and they gave me a financial compensation of 200 dollars a week.

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I bought a travelguide and I read that. I also watched an episode of 3 op reis and that was about it.
The culture is very similar so you don’t need a lot of preparation.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? No not really because the cultures are very similar.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: marituppelschoten@hotmail.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: The people at Goway are great they are very nice. Ask questions if something is not clear to you because that is better than making mistakes.

If you are done with your own work ask if you can help someone else. You work in a team so that’s really appreciated.

Just be open to anything and make the most of your weekends.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: There is a lot to do in Australia and not only in Sydney.
Sydney has awesome beaches where you can do lot’s of things such as surfing, snorkeling, swimming etc. There is the Operah House and Harbour Bridge but there are also parks lot’s of bars and clubs.

You can also do a lot of trips outside of Sydney during the weekends. I have been to Melbourne (Great Ocean Road), Brisbane and Ayers Rock and I did a surf camp. The flights are not that expensive and it gives you a change to see as much of Australia as you can.

Just do as much as you can because time flies over there!

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link