Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)

Placement organization

Name of organization: Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)
Town/city: Bangkok
Country: Thailand
Website: http://pata.org

Student

Name of student: Christoph Wegener

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2016-2017

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Tourism Association (Not for Profit)
Organization’s activities: The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is usually described as the catalyst for the tourism industry of travel and tourism in Pacific Asia. What does that really mean? An important pillar of PATA are the events, which are enjoying a high reputation. During these events, the more than 800 members have the opportunity to learn about certain topics, discuss, network and move sustainable development forward. That is certainly helpful to ensure an aligned advocacy and use tourism as a force of good. Member range from the private sector, non-profit organisations, governments, educational institutions or other leaders of the industry. Members can make use of the great research and access the newest data or insights for free, make use of the task force and enjoy other great benefits. Hence, PATA is the leading voice and authority in the industry.

PATA is reputed in the following:
• Consultancy and Leadership to the individual members as well as the collective
• Enhancing sustainable growth, value and quality in the Pacific Asia region by functioning as a catalyst
• Data and Insights including statistics (inbound and outbound), analyses, forecasts and report on tourism
• Creating business for members

Target group of the organization: Tourism Market Pacific Asia
Company culture: PATA is one of the major travel associations in the world, representing its members from mostly Pacific Asia. Thus it is very important, that PATA represents this in their philosophy of leading its own staff members. Every staff member matters and can voice their opinion and a balanced mix of gender, age, religion, language and nationality is crucial. It goes even so far that diversity is pro-actively encouraged by the management team.

Especially young professionals are encouraged to join the team. Also, the younger staff members of PATA have many opportunities to attend internal workshops and meetings to speak up and voice their opinion. The management team is open for suggestions. Even interns have the opportunity to meet the CEO in the pantry or have a chat with the event manager. Those flat hierarchies are probably very rare to find within Asian countries and PATA prides itself on that.
Number of employees: 36
Dress code: formal
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working? I worked in the Sustainability & Social Responsibility Department, which I can really recommend.

PATA Sustainability objectives:
• Generate tools that will allow sharing of knowledge on good sustainability practices
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and generate awareness on sustainability issues
• Advocate for policies related to sustainable development of the visitor economy
• Advocate for responsible organizational practices
• Utilize PATA’s network to disseminate key related messages, disseminate awareness and knowledge on sustainability and social responsibility to develop a sustainable and responsible visitor economy
• Incorporation of sustainability and social responsibility into all facets of PATA’s strategy and activities

Although PATA states that they are offering internships in the Marketing and Communication department, please consider that they rather choose graphic designers for such. I think tourism students from NHTV should specifically apply for either the events department, the membership department and most importantly the Sustainability & Social Responsibility department to have the best chances of being chosen.

PATA offers students the opportunity to learn about PATA and its activities by offering an Intern Associate Programme. In general, PATA’s intern associates will be required to perform operational, supportive and administrative tasks in various parts of the organisation. It is important to be curious and proactive by seeking for tasks. In addition having a responsive mind-set and being able to prioritise duties is an advantage.

The key areas to complete an internship include:
Membership
Marketing and Communications
Event Management
Research and Statistics
Sustainability & Social Responsibility
Photography and Video Production

Brief description of your daily activities: • Staying abreast of sustainable tourism and related news and articles
• Researching and developing weekly green living/green business tips/articles for publication
• Maintaining PATA’s sustainability website by regularly posting new content, editing existing pages as necessary
• Maintaining communications with supervisor and PATA Bangkok team; conducting communications with PATA partners and members as necessary
• Research, writing, editing projects as needed
• Assisting other PATA departments as needed
• Assisting in benchmarking processes for PATA office
• Attending industry events as appropriate

Brief description of your company assignment: Sustain.pata.org has a few distinct issues: the stable performance of the website, lack of goals, and a high bounce rate, all resulting in poor performance in comparison to pata.org. The key question of the problem is how the team of PATA Sustainability & Social Responsibility can attract more visitors to gain more popularity to increase its performance.

My company assignment was to implement changes to solve that. I choose the company assignment by myself in accordance with my supervisor.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: The supervisor of the department Sustainability & Social Responsibility is based in Seattle/US, meaning you will be only communicating with her on Skype/Whats App/Email (Ms. Chi Lo).

However, she is very helpful and knowledgeable. She will try everything to make you feel welcome, the team members in Bangkok as well. She expects you to work very professional and you will surely be pushed out of your comfort zone a few times, only for your best. It is crucial to be a good communicator (as she is not in the office), very independent and mature. If you show that you really want to do the internship and work hard for it, you will have a good time. You can talk quite direct to her, feedback is welcome. She is well respected at PATA for her leadership style which is quite western.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Excellent English Skills, Stress-proof, mature, very independent, knowledge of sustainable tourism and general interest in social responsibility
Additional company requirements for this placement? WordPress, Coding, SEO, Excel
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? Company helps you, you can choose options (payment by yourself)
How did you go to work every day? Public transport (get your accommodation near a BTS station!)

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? Yes, Non-O
Do you need a work permit? No
How did you arrange the necessary documents: Embassy
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? PATA will send you all needed documents within a month, I got my Visa within a week
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? No, make sure you will use the right professional terms and pay attention to detail

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 800,00
Accommodation (monthly): € 320,00
Local transport (monthly): € 50,00
General costs of living (monthly): € 700,00
Costs of visa: € 60,00
Costs of work permit: € 0
What did the company pay for/to you? Please negotiate, it is possible! (only when you got the contract, not before)
Advantages for negotiation: Previous work experience, study projects/awards, language skills

Financial compensation PATA:
300,00 Baht per day (for working days only, meaning consider covering up for any sick leaves, weekends or public holidays)
5.000,00 Baht per month for accommodation

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
Read on any do’s and dont’s related to the Thai kings as they take it very serious here and you can easily get in trouble.

I think the opinion of backpackers/friends who traveled to Thailand before do not really matters as you will actually work here, be part of the community and stay for circa 6 months. Inform yourself about the differences of your own culture to the Thai culture.

Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Yes, not negatively though.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: christstoph.wegener1@gmx.de

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Streetfood is usually save to eat
You will mostly receive smaller portions than in Europe, but people eat more often during the day
You can easily spend more money during a day in Bangkok than in Breda (be careful)
Tuk-Tuks are expensive but fun
As soon as you have a holiday, travel!
You can make things worse when complaining (let it go)
Do bargain (but not for food)
If working for PATA, get a flat close to Siam or a BTS station from where trains are going straight to Siam

If working at PATA, you will meet many other interns from around the world (circa 6 at one time) which is great.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Bangkok:
Rod Fai Market
JJ Night Market
Chatuchak Weekend Market
Cats/Dog Cafes
Airplane Graveyard
Thai Wakeboard Park
Any temples/palaces
Asiatique the Riverfront
Any roof-top-bar (best view: Moon & Vertigo or Sirocco)
Shopping Malls/Cinemas/Arcades
(You can find anything in Bangkok)

Travel:
Ayutthaya
Koh Samet
Erawan Waterfalls
Pattaya
Chiang Mai
Hua Hin
Southern Islands
Any country in South East Asia

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link