Enjoy Apartments

Placement organization

Name of organization: Enjoy Apartments
Town/city: Barcelona
Country: Spanje
Website: http://www.enjoyapartments.com

Name of student: Amber Roest

Specialist area: MT
Placement period: 2015-2016

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Agency which rents apartments
Organization’s activities: Enjoy apartments is an organization which rents apartments for short- and long-term stay. They offer apartments in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Andorra, Curacao, Madrid, Malaga, Marbella, Rio de Janeiro, Aruba, London, Ibiza, Mallorca, Lisbon, Rome, Cape Town, Milan and Istanbul.

For a few apartments Enjoy Apartments only arrange bookings, but for a few apartments in Rotterdam and Barcelona they arrange the bookings, channel management, revenue management, reputation management (reviews), marketing, cleaning and the check-in/check-out.

Other activities of the organisation is searching new affiliaties in different cities.
Target group of the organization: Groups and short stays
Company culture: The company culture is informal. There is no special dress code, just wearing your daily clothes (casual).
When I started my internship I was working with Ralph and Sol, an employee which came from Argentina. She is the only employee from Ralph. In the time I was doing my internship there arrived 3 other interns, all from holland but from different schools.
Number of employees: 2
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? At Enjoy Apartments there are not specific departments, you have different tasks but you are working mostly all together.
My specific tasks where Channel management and Revenue management.

Channel management
I had to check the enquirys, emails and bookings every day for every channel. I had to respons on these enquiries and control the bookings. I shared this task with my colleague.

Revenue management
Every week I had to control the prices, fill in the prices from the bookings on a special sheet and change the prices for the apartments which were still available. Ralph helped me with this.

Brief description of your daily activities: Shown above.
Brief description of your company assignment: My company assignment was to analyze the current used channels and the competition of Enjoy Apartments, focused on markup versus commission.

Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: The supervision at Enjoy Apartments is good. I had to work a lot together with my collegue and they let me do a lot of things on my own. This was scary, but you learn a lot this way. If I didn’t understand anything I could always ask my colleague or Ralph.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? independent, teamplayer, sociable
Additional company requirements for this placement? Not specific
English: Basic
Spanish:
French:
German: Mother tongue
Italian:
Other languages: Don’t worry about your English, in a few weeks your used to talk English.

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? I arrange my accommodation via Ralph, we rented a really nice apartment in the area L’Eixample.
How did you go to work every day? I went to work by foot.

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? No
Do you need a work permit? No
How did you arrange the necessary documents:
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? Sometimes this can take long, because Ralph is busy. But just remind him and he will answer.
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? I didn’t take any Spanish classes before, but I would recommend it to everybody. It is very handy to speak Spanish here, I had a small basis of Spanish but would love to speak some more Spanish..

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 220
Accommodation (monthly): € 450
Local transport (monthly): € 0
General costs of living (monthly): € 250
Costs of visa: € 0
Costs of work permit: € 0
What did the company pay for/to you? Nothing

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I did not prepare myself for the culture of Spain. But I knew a few stuff about Spain, Catalonia and Barcelona before I came here. You learn a lot about the city and the culture in the first weeks.

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: Amber_7-10-95@hotmail.com

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: I would recommend everyone going abroad for doing an internship, especially here in Barcelona. Barcelona is a beautiful city and offers a lot. If you want to learn Spanish this could be difficult here, but you will always learn a bit of Spanish here.

Otherthings
Just be outside of your home, every day there is something to do here in the city. And just try to see as much as you can, when you are here the time flies.. so..Enjoy!
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: There are a lot of leisure possibilities here in Barcelona.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link