Corinthia Hotel St.George’s Bay

Placement organization

Name of organization: Corinthia Hotel St.George’s Bay
Town/city: St.Julians
Country: Malta
Website: https://www.corinthia.com/en/hotels/malta-stgeorgesbay

Name of student: Diliana Theloesen

Specialist area: ITTI
Placement period: 2017-2018

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Hotel
Organization’s activities: Corinthia St George’s Bay is a luxurious 5 star hotel, which targets luxury guests both leisure and business on a national and international scale.
Target group of the organization: upper market, leisure & business- MICE
Company culture: The company culture is informal. Colleagues do communicate with each other in an informal way. This helps to create a nice working atmosphere. However, when matters are urgent or the guests are involved, the communication becomes more formal.
As an intern you are part of the team and get some responsibility,the work pressure is very high on employees, but not on interns. The workload differs per department.
Number of employees: 150-200
Dress code: formal
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working?

Marketing department

Brief description of your daily activities: I am working in the Marketing Department, this is one of the most busiest departments of the Hotel and usually the interns get a lot of responsibilities too. This is because of the fact that the Marketing Department is looking after two hotels and its outlets. Within the Marketing department we produce leaflets, flyers & brochures.Further the department is also responsible to keep the website up to date, checking online offers of tour operators and posting events of Corinthia on several websites. Sometimes I was also involved in photo shoots or filming. When working in this department no day is the same and it can be full of surprises.
Brief description of your company assignment: During my company assignment I did research after the new offer of one of our outlets ; DaMarina Cucina Italiana restaurant, For this, I did a competitor analysis and visited our direct competitors too, quantitative research (questionnaire) for guests in our new restaurant of DaMarina and draw up in the end a SWOT for the new offer and wrote recommendations and suggestions concerning the promotion of DaMarina's new offer.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Very good. Although he is very busy, he will make time to sit down and talk. After a while you will have a lot of responsibilities yourself and you will be always guided whenever you need it.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? both team player and independent, social, communicative, flexible, multitasking, professional, and creative
Additional company requirements for this placement? writing skills, photoshop, paint
English: Advanced
Spanish:
French:
German: Basic
Italian: Basic
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? through the internet (roomsinmalta)
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? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? Only if your English is insufficient

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € € 150
Accommodation (monthly): € € 385
Local transport (monthly): € € 15 ( I recommend to get a bus card) this will give you 50% discount on each journey
General costs of living (monthly): € € 250
Costs of visa: € –
Costs of work permit: € –
What did the company pay for/to you? Free lunch

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I bought a travel guide and read some things on the internet beforehand, while I was doing some research for my brief destination analysis.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Yes

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: 151165@edu.nhtv.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: If you would like to go to Malta, I would recommend to show that you are motivated and interested in your job. If you show this at Corinthia, your manager and other employees will be more willingly to help you and this will also improve the quality of your internship.

When you know that you will do your internship in Malta, start asap with looking for an accommodation, since the Maltese culture has a slow-pace of life it might take longer to arrange everything. Also finding an accommodation is not that easy since many people are looking for an affordable accommodation in the crowded area of St.Julians. I strongly recommend to look for an accommodation in St.Julians itself, the buses are horrible here and it is much better to walk every day to your work.

I personally do not recommend Malta as a country for your placement. The island is very small and the area of St.Julians is crowded, and the Maltese seem to get tired of all the tourists visiting the island. Also many companies do not give their interns many responsibilities and very little work (what I heard at least from other interns).
I think I am very lucky to be at the marketing department.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: Discover the island of Malta and Gozo and visit places such as; Valletta, Mdina, The Three Cities, Dingli Cliffs and many more! If you have the chance visit the Italian Island Sicily which is very nearby and is much more beautiful than Malta! Since it is very easy to travel from Malta to other places because of the low-cost airlines, I would strongly recommend you to do that. I will go soon to Athens and will go after my internship for a week travelling around Italy.

When you want to explore Malta, please do this asap while when the season starts, tourists spots and buses are completely full and it is hard to reach certain spots.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link