CRS Tours

Placement organization

Name of organization: CRS Tours
Town/city: San José
Country: Costa Rica
Website: http://www.crstours.com

Name of student: Maureen Rietveld

Specialist area: MT
Placement period: 2015-2016

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Incoming touroperator
Organization’s activities: CRS Tours has diferent departments. The Sales department has contact with the clients and they sell the customized packages. The Reservations/Operations department reserves the selected hotels, tours, transport etc. Accounting, here are the employers working on the financial parts, they make sure that (for example) all payments are done. The Marketing department makes sure that social media and all the marketing activities are done correctly.
Target group of the organization: Europe & USA
Company culture: The company culture is quite informal and relaxed. Jan and Lorena are the owners of CRS Tours. Carolina is the supervisor of the Sales team, she makes sure that the goals (of Sales) can be reached.
Number of employees: 14
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? During my internship I was mainly part of the Sales team. I helped several clients from Europe and the USA. Besides that I was updating the website and packages, as well as texts. I also worked at the marketing department, with giving ideas for the social media accounts, for example I re-created the Instagram account for CRS Tours.
Brief description of your daily activities: – Creating customized packages for clients
– Making quotations for the packages
– Updating the website and writing texts
– Marking service conformations
– Giving ideas for the social media accounts
– Analyzing CRS Tours
Brief description of your company assignment: CRS Tours started operating on the European market, but nowadays there is a crisis in Europe and there is a decline in selling packages to the clients from Europe. Because of this, CRS Tours started to operate on the USA market, nowadays they have a lot of direct clients from the USA. In cause of developping this market, CRS Tours wants to start B2B working relationships with tour operators from the USA, to increase the clientele from the USA. I made a marketing/ distribution plan for new workingrelationships in the USA. Firstly I analysed CRS Tours and its market. Secondly I started searching for tour operators in the USA that could potential fit with CRS Tours. Thirdly I made groups and created an e-mail marketing campaign to get in contact with the tour operators.
The plan was for giving an idea for new workingrelationships in the USA and starting the marketing campaign. CRS Tours can realize B2B relationships.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Marloes was my supervisor, a dutch girl who is working and living in Costa Rica. You can also be supervised by Carolina, she is the supervisor of the Sales team. Your work will be checked before they send it to the clients. You can go anytime to Jan, to have a conversation and to ask several things. For my assingment of the USA I mainly discussed my assigment with Jan. You have to take a lot of initiative, otherwise you get maybe bored or you don´t have enough time to work on your school assignments, which is actually very important.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Sociable, flexible, stress-proof, customer-friendly, indepent.
Additional company requirements for this placement? Word & Excel.
English: Advanced
Spanish: Basic
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? CRS Tours reccomended me a host family to stay, this place was $350,- per month
How did you go to work every day? From the house to the office it is +-15 min walking

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? No, I got a tourist visa, that last for 90 days.
Do you need a work permit? No
How did you arrange the necessary documents: Internet (ESTA)
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? +- 1/2 months
Did you need certain vaccinations? Yes
How long in advance? 2/3 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 never had Spanish before, than a basic course would be helpfull.

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 900
Accommodation (monthly): € +-330 ($350,-)
Local transport (monthly): € 40 (traveling to several destinations, the bus in San José and surroundings costs only 0,50 cents)
General costs of living (monthly): € 400 (traveling, eating/drinking, going out etc.)
Costs of visa: € 11 ($14,-)
Costs of work permit: € –
What did the company pay for/to you? CRS Tours does not provide any financial compensation.

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
Before I went to Costa Rica I prepared by reading the lonely planet guide and also the code orange information.
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: 131169@nhtv.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: You should be allert all the time. I reccommend you not to walk alone at night in San José or other places. You have to be confident and don´t pay attention to the people that shout at you. If you take a taxi, tell him that you want to use the meter or say a price before he will drive, otherwise they are going to charge you a lot or drive extra rounds to get more money. Don´t eat any food that people are selling on the streets (especially no chicken). If you are going to cross the border to Nicaragua or Panana, don´t change your money right at the border, sometimes this is fake money or they charge you a lot. San José is a really nice city and Costa Rica overall, a really nice country. I am sure you will love it, but as we all now in every place you have to be allert all the times.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: From San José you can go everywhere in the country and also to Panama and Nicaragua. In San José there is a lot to do, you can go to the center and to the hand craft market where thy sell typical Costa Rican things. In Escazú (near San José) you have Multiplaza, this is a modern mall where they have a lots of shops such as Forever 21 and Zara. Since short there is a new mall in Alajuela, about 20 minutes from San José, they say that this is the biggest one in Latin America!
I would recommend you to travel in the weekends, you have a lot of nice places to go such as beaches, volcanos, rainforrest and more. The closest beach is 2 hours away from San José.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me!

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link