Panorama Holidays

Placement organization

Name of organization: Panorama Holidays
Town/city: Kuala Lumpur
Country: Maleisië
Website: https://phclick.com/

Name of student: Evita Cronenberghs

Specialist area: TM
Placement period: 2017-2018

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Tour operator/B2B
Organization’s activities: You will be based at the office, which is a 9 till 6 job with a lunch break from 1 till 2. At the office you will help out in the daily activities like making quotations, answering request, updating rooming lists for the tours, keeping in contact with relations about, rates, availability etc. Making itineraries for guest based on their requests and compare hotels, tours and transfer rates to provide the best for the guests.

At the moment Panorama Holidays is re-branding into PHclick.com, that is why I am also busy with developing and updating the new website and Facebook.
Target group of the organization: Diverse
Company culture: You notice a clear hierarchy when working at the office, but it never really bothered me. At the office you have to wear appropriate clothes, for the girls it is quite casual ( a lot is approved except jeans) for the boys it is a little more formal (have to wear blouse and nice pants). For all employees regarding the shoes, you have to wear inside slippers/houseslippers at the office, but they are not to strict as with the clothes.
Number of employees: 11
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes and no, At first I discussed with the company that the internship would be at least involve 2 tours (3 with the study tour) unfortunately they could not live up to their promise. I was able to do 1 tour which I loved, but of course it was disappointing to hear that I could not do another tour

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working?

I am working at the inbound department. the company does not really have just one target group, because it is a B2B company. We have a lot of different markets that we work with and for. The group that you will have the most with will be the Dutch market, because we work together with KRAS, a Dutch company. For KRAS we do the group tours where you will have a change to do a tour with as tour guide, as a Dutch speaking person. At the office you will work with varied type of markets and especially other agents.

At the inbound department we will make tours etc. for people from another country that wants to come to Malaysia and explore everything about it. At the outbound department we will provide tours for Malaysians to go outside of Malaysia to go for holiday.

Brief description of your daily activities: Everyone has its own workstation with desk, computer and phone. During the office days I am responsible for:
• Assisting in upgrading the website
• Making costing sheets
• Making quotations
• Answer requests of guest
• Keeping in contact with relations about, rates, availability etc.
• Making itineraries for guest based on their requests
• Compare hotels, tours and transfer rates to provide the best for the guests

During this internship I will not only be working at the office, I will also work at the operation department. This will contain doing a study tour with own of the tour leaders to see and practice, after that you will have the opportunity to go on a tour as a tour leader yourself. There will always be a local guide and a chauffeur with you, but you will be responsible for:
• The total amount of guest during the tour
• The hotels, tours, transfers and keeping them up to date regarding the itinerary
• Providing information about the country, interesting facts, culture, politics and
history
Brief description of your company assignment: I was able to choose my own company assignment, because the company did not have any assignments for me. My company assignment is Providing market research to find out how to best implement our existing product in an existing market (market penetration) through a competitive approach.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: The supervision is not a lot, due to the language barrier. I can always ask for help, but it is hard to understand to communicate about what I mean and about what they mean. I do not always understand what they are explaining to me, so I tried to ask help from my Dutch coworkers, my class and friends from school and I also contacted the previous intern that explained me some things. Basically you have to find your own way how to figure it out, but they want to help. I just preferred contacting other sources too.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? independent!! flexible, not afraid standing in front of a group, be a leader, social and a teamplayer. But the most important thing is independent, you will be alone quite some time during your internship and building a social life is quite hard in Malaysia when you live in a local area and not in the actual city itself
Additional company requirements for this placement? you need to have good word and excel skills
English: Intermediate
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? Company
How did you go to work every day? By foot

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? No, you will do a visrun
Do you need a work permit? No, you will do a visarun
How did you arrange the necessary documents: nvt
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? nvt
Did you need certain vaccinations? No
How long in advance? i already had a few vaccinations so i did not needed any other ones, but it is your own choice if you want the vaccinations

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, if your english is good you will be fine, but you will still have the language barrier with the locals

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 400/600 one way ticket depending on which date you go
Accommodation (monthly): € 0 (you have to pay electricity which is around 50/70 RM a month)
Local transport (monthly): € The transport is cheap and you only need it for your free time because the appartment that you are staying in is located across the street of the office. I spend about 10 euro a month
General costs of living (monthly): € Depending on yourself but i spend about 80 euro a month
Costs of visa: € 0 ( because you go on visarun and that is up to you how expensive you make that, which country you go to for example, indonesia is more expensive then going to thailand)
Costs of work permit: € 0
What did the company pay for/to you? Every month I get 500 RM which is 100 euro.
Also you get 1 day off a month.
You will stay in an apartment across the street from the office without paying for rent, but you will have to pay for the electricity.

When you have the possibility to go on tour you will receive 20 RM a day for own expenses. Note that you will only receive this when you are the tour guide and not when you go with another tour guide for a study tour. (study tour means the first time you will go on tour to experience everything and see how everything is arrange during the tour, learning for when you have to do it al yourself)

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I did not really prepare that much, I read and did a little bit of research about the culture and the country. That was actually the only thing I did and maybe it is better to practice a little of Bahasa before you go, because in the beginning i really struggled with the language barrier. Some can speak English very good, but most of them have trouble with this. Specially in the beginning I found this difficult, because for them it was hard to teach me stuff and for me hard to understand what they wanted me to do. I did not understand any of my assignments that I had to do, so I was really happy when my Dutch colleague came back for tour and was able to explain everything to me.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Yes, especially in the beginning

Future students on placement

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

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: I am half way on my internship now and I had some times that I did not enjoyed myself (mostly when I was at the office, I am more a person for outdoor) but those times did not compare to the times when it was great. it is truly a lovely experience, but you have to see the nice things of it and explore yourself. Go out and do fun stuff go weekend away etc. otherwise you will get bored and into a negative atmosphere.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Their is quite a lot to do and I already did so much of it, especially in Kuala Lumpur of course, but I am still not done exploring KL. I especially liked eating at Jalan ALor, going to Helipad for drinks and good view and just go into the city and out of the apartment!

I went for my visarun to Bali/Gili islands and on my birthday I will go to the Perhentian islands. In the weekends I mostly go out, but not always a whole weekend but just a day, because even when everything is so cheap here you still spend a lot of money!

My advise is try to save up so you will not have to many limitations being here, the trips and weekends away will really make you internship memorable, of course i am also talking about the tour you will do with the company for KRAS.

Feel free to contact me for info, or pics/videos, stories and advise!

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link