MCI Nordics/Ovation Scandinavia

Placement organization

Name of organization: MCI Nordics/Ovation Scandinavia
Town/city: Stockholm
Country: Zweden
Website: http://ovationdmc.com/country/sweden/

Name of student: Jessica Keijzer

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2016-2017

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: DMC
Organization’s activities: Ovation Scandinavia is a Destination Management Company and its mainly tasks are making proposals (including hotels, venues, restaurants and transportation), ground handling services and event assistance.
MCI Nordics does, besides that, organise conference and help clients with the organisation of events, among other by offering creative ideas.
Target group of the organization: Business clients, MICE, PCO, M&E
Company culture: MCI Nordics/Ovation Scandinavia is quite an informal company. It is a noticeable distance between the General Manager and the other employees, but apart from that the atmosphere is informal. I have had many dinners or other fun events with my colleagues and there are many moments for a Fika (which is a typical Swedish moment of having a coffee/tea and sweets)
Number of employees: +/- 20
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Mostly. It was quite hard to find time to work on my company assignment, since it is so busy in the office, but eventually this worked out well.

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? DMC
Brief description of your daily activities: My main activity is making proposals (which is a budget and PowerPoint presentation with information about the program we offer the client). Besides that, there were many meetings I had to be a part of. Another activity I worked on was event preparations and administrations, which were small, quite simple tasks. During the last two months, I worked on Cvent as well, which is a quite technical program used for making proposals. Last, I had the change to work on three different projects during the day of the event. However, this is definitely not the main task.

If you want to do your placement at MCI Nordics/Ovation Scandinavia, you should be prepared to making a lot of proposals. It is very important that you show interest and are proactive if you want to do more than making proposals.
Brief description of your company assignment: I had to research the company’s sustainability and find ways in which the company’s sustainability can be improved.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: If you want to do your placement at MCI Nordics/Ovation Scandinavia, you should be prepared to work very individually. Ana, the company supervisor, is very kind, but it is very difficult for her to find time to supervise you, since she is really busy.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Independent, sociable, flexible, stress-proof, proactive
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office, especially Excell and PowerPoint
English: Advanced
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages: Swedish would help you a lot. The employees really want to speak English but forget about this quite often. I really had to remember them quite often that I did not speak Swedish well enough to understand their conversations.

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? Via Facebook. There are a lot of groups to find accommodation, I found mine via the group “Nederlanders in Stockholm”
How did you go to work every day? Public transport

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? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? Yes, a Swedish language course would help you a lot. The employees really want to speak English but forget about this a lot of times. I really had to remember them quite often that I did not speak Swedish well enough to understand their conversations.

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € Around 100 – 120 euro
Accommodation (monthly): € My accommodation was 370, but it was quite far away from the city centre. If you want a nice accommodation not too far from the city centre, you should consider around 500 – 700 euro. I really was lucky with finding mine and do not believe that you can find anything that’s much cheaper, mostly more expensive
Local transport (monthly): € 85 euros per month
General costs of living (monthly): € Including accommodation, I would calculcate no less than 800 – 1000 euros. Stockholm is really, really expensive. When I tried to spend as less as possible during one month, I did still spend around 500 euros
Costs of visa: €
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? Unfortunately, the company did not pay for anything. Except from the lovely Fika’s at the office

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I did not prepare myself, since I thought that it would be quite similar to the Dutch culture. However, when I came here I really had to adjust to the fact that the Swedish are way more reserved than the Dutch, which was especially difficult during the dark winters with almost no sunshine
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Not too much

Future students on placement

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

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: – It would be really useful to learn some Swedish.
– In Sweden they are used to eating warm during lunch. So if you don’t want to receive any comments about your food from colleagues who are doubting how your lunch can be healthy or enough, you might want to change the typical Dutch lunch for a Swedish “proper” warm lunch.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Try to get to know the city as well as possible during the first months, for example by joining some of the free walking tours, and try to find your favorite places. Especially during the dark winter months it is really nice to go out and find those special spots that you love about the city. I personally really love Sodermalm and Vasastan.
Another way to get through this dark winter month is by making new friends If it is difficult to find these via your work, you can try “Nederlanders in Stockholm”, “Stockholm language café” or “Interns in Stockholm”. All of these are really nice for getting to know new people.
When the weather gets better, its really nice to take a Stromma boat into the archipelago to enjoy the Stockholm archipelago. The archipelago islands are very beautiful and definitely worth a visit.
Besides that, it is great to visit other cities, such as Sigtuna and Uppsala. Besides that, I have been to the North of Sweden with the SL train, which was really fun. On the way to the North you already pass a lot of beautiful places and at your place of destination (mine was the IKEA city Almhult, since I’ve got family there, but whatever it will be for you, it’s just nice to see more of the country) you will see a totally different side of Sweden than the capital.
Another aspect I love about Stockholm is that there are a lot of nature and parks nearby. It really surprised me how green the area is once you leave the city centre. I really recommed to visit some of the (national) parks.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link