Abercrombie & Kent Italy

Placement organization

Name of organization: Abercrombie & Kent Italy
Town/city: Florence
Country: Italië
Website: http://www.akdmc.com/italy/

Student

Name of student: Fenja Weberskirch

Specialist area: ITTI
Placement period: 2012-2013

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Incoming Tour Operator
Organization’s activities: Designs and operated luxurious tailor made travel within Italy, Croatia (and sometimes in Slovenia, Montenegro and Malta).
Target group of the organization: Mainly the American market, but also others. As it is a luxurious TO, it focuses on wealthy clients.
Company culture: The relations and communication was really nice and relaxed, everyone calls each other by forename, even the boss, and they told me to do so from day 1 on, which I liked. Besides this, I was treated as a normal employee and not as an intern, which I really appreciated.
Number of employees: 10
Dress code: formal, but slightly casual, no jeans. Unless its (casual) Friday, then you cean wear whatever you want.
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes, but please note that in certain periods (high season weeks) you do not always have time to work on your assignments besides everyday business.

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? The Italy Branch has a FIT department (FIT=Foreign Individual Travel, so tailor made), a Group Planner, an Accountant and a Villas Department.
I worked in the FIT department and supported the Group Planner now and then.
Brief description of your daily activities: Operate Booking (make time planning, contact and book all suppliers, etc.), keep logs updated, issuing vouchers and so on…
Brief description of your company assignment: In order to increase the sales with a specific sales office, I had to come up with an alternative for faster quoting versus using the usual and rather slow reservations system and to realize and implement this.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Supervision was given by the boss of the office, but as he was on business trips now and then, the team leader of the department was taking care of it as well. But main decisions have been made by the boss as well as the assessment.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Accuracy, dealing with numeracy, organizational skills, being able to manage your time, working individually but also with others, setting priorities, communicational skills
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office (Word & Excel important). You will be trained to use their booking system called Travel Studio.
English: Advanced
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian: Intermediate
Other languages: English is the company language and all correspondence is in English. Colleagues speak Italian amongst each other, but English to me.

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? I arranged it myself and searched and found it online (on craigslist, but there are several other websites as well)
How did you go to work every day? 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?
Did you need certain vaccinations? No
How long in advance?

Language course

Did you take a language course before you started your placement? Yes
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? Yes. I did mine at Europass Florence, one week before my placement started, but I think an evening course would have been better and more effective.

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € Around EUR 120,= for both ways. Please be aware that during the summer months tickets to Pisa / Florence can get rather expensive.
Accommodation (monthly): € 500,00
Local transport (monthly): € Nothing
General costs of living (monthly): € 400,00 (rough estimation, depends on the persons lifestyle)
Costs of visa: €
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? EUR 600,00 per month

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? It did not influence my performance, but as most colleagues are Italian you sometimes notice their mentality, which I liked.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: 101423@edu.nhtv.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Enjoy the Italian way of life and do all typical stuff like aperitivo, buy your food at the local markets (e.g. Mercato Centrale) and travel around in Tuscany and further (Rome, Milan and Venice are easy reachable by tran, takes around 1,5 up to 2,5 hours).
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Florence offers plenty of stuff to do! Its an amazing city and the seaside is not too far away either! Really enjoyed my stay here. For anything else, please feel free to contact me!

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link