Pure! Ecuador

Placement organization

Name of organization: Pure! Ecuador
Town/city: Quito
Country: Ecuador
Website: http://pure-travelgroup.com

Name of student: Nina Mulders

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2014-2015

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Tour operator
Organization’s activities: Pure! Ecuador is an experienced tour operator located in Ecuador´s capital city, Quito. As an incoming agent we work for travel companies that require exceptional service and in-depth experiences throughout Ecuador. In the past 2 years Pure! Ecuador has been operating in the B2B brance however since March 2015 we are also active in the B2C brance. We enter our trips on online platforms, we make quotes, we create travel guides for our costumers and we are active on diverse social media platforms. Pure! Travel Group consists of Pure! Bolivia, Pure! Peru, Pure! Ecuador and Pure! Colombia. In addition to the aforementioned offices Pure! owns several exclusive products to wit Cotococha Amazon Lodge, Andes&Amazon and the recently launched product, Andes Overland.

Travel Group which besides Ecuador also has direct operations in Bolivia, Peru & Colombia
Target group of the organization: The world
Company culture: Pure! Ecuador is part of the company Pure! Travel Group which is owned by Bram Evers, a former NHTV Tourism student. During you intership you will work for Pure! Ecuador in the office in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. The company’s culture is informal, you can dress casual and everyone is very friendly. Every month 2 empolyees of the company are in charge of the “social activities”. Their task is to order pizza or cake when it is someone’s birthday and they have to organize a random “event” during that month. This month is my social month together with Bram (the boss) and my supervisor Nadine. Since all three of us are Dutch we organize Kingsday!
Number of employees: 20
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? Online marketing
Brief description of your daily activities: Offically I am assigned to the online marketing department however my tasks vary greatly from day to day. Together with the former intern Nadine (who signed a year contract at the company in January 2015) we launched the company’s new product Andes Overland. Now the whole project is up and running my daily tasks consist of the online marketing of Andes Overland (instagram, facebook and pinterest) uploading new information or trips to platforms, designing personalized travel guids for our costumers and creating a database with traveltips for all of our destinations. In between you will have several tasks that in my case varied from writing sustainable policies for on the websites to writing blogs.
Brief description of your company assignment: I am writing a marketing plan for Andes Overland where the following interns can work with and I executed market research in order to get an overview of our clients.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: I am supervised by Nadine, which is the former intern of the company and accepted a permanent position at the company however her contract will end in January 2016. I can always ask everything and she gives me relevant feedback on my work.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? flexible, independent, sociable.
Additional company requirements for this placement? Writing skills in English!! MS Office, Excel
English: Advanced
Spanish: Intermediate
French: Basic
German: Basic
Italian:
Other languages: You don’t need to speak other languages than English and Spanish! Life and work is a lot easier when you speak advanced Spanish. Except for the boss and Nadine all employees are Ecuadorian and thus speak Spanish.

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? By myself through airbnb
How did you go to work every day? public transport or cab

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? Yes, you need a 12IX Visa which is valid for 6 months
Do you need a work permit? No.
How did you arrange the necessary documents: Through the Ecuadorian embassy in the Netherlands.
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? 2 weeks
Did you need certain vaccinations? Yes
How long in advance? 2 months

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? If you Spanish is intermediate than it might be wise to do so, however I am currently following Spanish Classes here in Quito. Private class is $ 7 dollars an hour. Otherwise $ 5.50

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 1000
Accommodation (monthly): € 240
Local transport (monthly): € 50
General costs of living (monthly): € 500
Costs of visa: € 160 (200 dollars)
Costs of work permit: € 0
What did the company pay for/to you? Financial compensation of $ 350 dollars a month and lunch.

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I did not really prepared myself to be honest, just go with the flow!
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? No.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: nina.mulders@gmail.com

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Do not be frightened by the safety adivce of the ministry of tourism. Yes, you are going to South – America but Ecuador is relatively speaking a safe country. The most important thing is to make sure you always take a safe cabe.These are the cabs with the green number of the municipal on the front window or on the side of the car and the cabs that have a red seguro sign. Use your common sense, be aware of your stuff ,especially when you travel with public transport, and as a girl don’t go walking on the streets alone at night. During my time here in Ecuador I have never felt threatened and I have never found myself in a dangerous situation. You can make use of the “easy taxi” application through your mobile phone but when you walk on the street don’t cabes than ONLY have the easy taxi sticker. They can be fake.

I am enjoying my internship here in Ecuador, I like my work, my boss is great and I would definitely recommend the company. Bram is not the kind of boss that will check every move you make, you have to be able to work independent and sometimes make choices yourself. This does not mean you can do nothing but as long as you try your best they try their best. I do know that when there is something wrong or when I need something I can always ask for help.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Ecuador has literally hundreds of possibilities for activities, day trips, weekend trips or short breaks! Public transport will costs you roughly 1 dollar per hour. This means that for less than 10 dollars you can cross the whole country. During my time here in Ecuador I have visited Cotococha Lodge (our hotel in the Amazon) for 2 days. I went on a weekend trip to Banos to go ziplining and next week I will go to mindo for a weekend. I am here together with my boyfriend who also does his internship here. Living in a big city like Quito could make it difficult to find friends. My best advise is to go to the international exchange evenings in the pub and join facebook groups like expats in Quito. These people are wonderful! On weekdays I follow Spanish classes and Salsa classes.

I still have two months to go here in Quito and we are still planning to visit the Cotopaxi (The highest active volcano in the world) Lake Quilotoa, the beach in Mompiche and Cuenca. After your internship you still have four weeks left on your visa. We made use of this opportunity and are going to travel through Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands!!!

The pictures are taken at Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the world).
With Ecuadorian carnaval at a local family!
During our weekend trip to Banos!

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link