Club ESL & Discover Canada Tours

Placement organization

Name of organization: Club ESL & Discover Canada Tours
Town/city: Vancouver
Country: Canada
Website: http://wwww.discovercanadatours.com

Student

Name of student: Lisan Prick

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2011-2012

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Tour operator
Organization’s activities: Offering budget tours in Western Canada, after-school activities and parties at nightclubs for ESL Students
Target group of the organization: ESL students (students who study at language schools) who are mainly from Asia and South America.
Company culture: Discover Canada Tours is a very informal company. Everybody is always in for a talk and I really felt part of a team.
Number of employees: 15 (excluding long-term + short-term interns)
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? Family – owned business; Sales/Marketing, Operations, Accounting. I worked in Sales & Marketing, Operations, General Customer Services
Brief description of your daily activities: I worked at the office and the sales team. At the office I worked at the reception desk. I answered e-mails/phone calls, prepared tour bags, did bookings and some accounting. At the sales team I’d visit schools and mainly do bookings, update promotion material etc. To be honest, I expected to have a deeper insight in the marketing & operations department, but they don’t really let you experience that part of the company.
Brief description of your company assignment: I worked on a Tour Guide Evaluation and Rewards Program. I performed research on the customers’ and office workers’ (co-workers) satisfaction with the tour guides and created a step to step program for them that would make the evaluation and the allocation of rewards easier. The goal was to see which tour guides are doing well as well as to see where extra training may be needed. Basically, a tool to motivate & improve the guides.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Christina was supervising me during my internship. She’s really helpful and fun to talk with. It could get pretty busy during the Summer months, and during this time it could sometimes be hard to schedule a meeting.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Sociable, flexible and stress-proof are the most important skills.
Additional company requirements for this placement? Word, Excel and it’s a great benefit if you know how to work with Adobe Photoshop
English: Advanced
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? Via connections of a friend of ours in Breda. My friend and I could move in with the brother of a friend of the girl we know in Breda. Before finding this apartment, we constantly checked Craigslist and had several viewings.
How did you go to work every day? By foot (10 min) and Skytrain (5 min)

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? Yes (I applied for a working holiday visa)
Do you need a work permit? No
How did you arrange the necessary documents: Via the website of the Canadian Embassy in Germany (there’s no Dutch Embassy which issues visas so you’d have to apply here). It took them about 4 weeks (mine was fast!). You can only apply for the visa when the application forms are online (which is around December). Apply asap, cause it could definitely take a while before you’ll get your visa.
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? In my case 4 weeks
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? n/a

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 800,00
Accommodation (monthly): € 525,00
Local transport (monthly): € 30,00 (I always bought the student public transport pass, but this is actually only meant for UBC students)
General costs of living (monthly): € 500,00
Costs of visa: € 110,00
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? Join the tours free of charge

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I did not
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Not really. Canada’s culture is very comparable with the European culture.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: 092431@edu.nhtv.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Although the company is located in downtown, you don’t necessarily have to find a room in Downtown Vancouver. It’s pretty expensive to live there and I don’t think Downtown is a nice place to live (too busy I’d say). There are lots of other cool neighborhoods which have a pretty good connection to downtown, such as Commercial Drive, Mount Pleasant and Kitsilano. And as far as the organization concerned, if you’re open-minded & social I’m sure you’ll have a great time!
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: There’s lots of cool stuff to do in and around Vancouver: eat loads of cheap sushi (the only thing which is cheap in Van), bike around in Stanley Park, visit the Capilano & Lynn Suspension bridge, the Lighthouse park and Bowen Island, snowboard at Grouse Mountain, or Seymour & Cypress which are close too!

The great thing about Discover Canada Tours, is that you’re able to join the tours for free! (Whistler, Rocky Mountains, Seattle, Victoria & Tofino)

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link