Serenata Hotels & Resorts

Placement organization

Name of organization: Serenata Hotels & Resorts
Town/city: Bangkok
Country: Thailand
Website: https://www.serenatahotels.com

Name of student: Valerie Nolte

Specialist area: ITMC
Placement period: 2017-2018

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Hotel group
Organization’s activities: Selling hotel rooms and tour packages.
Target group of the organization: Thai people
Company culture: Semi formal company culture. Everybody reports back to the GM and the marketing director, who is the son of the CEO. The people are friendly and familiar with each other, the dress code is fairly casual.
Number of employees: 50
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Somewhat

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working?

Marketing department, but only responsible for social media marketing, all other parts of the marketing were not accessible for me.

Brief description of your daily activities: Post on facebook, twitter, google+ and instagram for the different hotel pages. Respond to reviews on trip advisor, booking.com and expedia. Write blogs for the hotel website.
Brief description of your company assignment: Write a marketing plan for the social media of the hotels.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: My supervisor was not very involved and did not have much faith in me with regards do giving me assignments. Furthermore he was not in the office much and had no idea what I was exactly working on. He was very nice and very engaged with the business and has given me the opportunity to see some properties.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Sociable, flexible
Additional company requirements for this placement? –
English: Intermediate
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages: Thai could be useful as not many people in the company are willing to speak english

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? foot

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? yes educational internship visa
Do you need a work permit? no
How did you arrange the necessary documents: thai embassy in the netherlands
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents? 4 days
Did you need certain vaccinations? Yes
How long in advance? Already had them

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? It is very useful to know some basic thai but a language course is not necessary

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 600
Accommodation (monthly): € 0
Local transport (monthly): € 50
General costs of living (monthly): € 500
Costs of visa: € 60
Costs of work permit: € –
What did the company pay for/to you? The company arranged the accommodation in their own hostel. Furthermore I was allowed to have breakfast at the hotel every morning and I would get 10% discount on laundry and on food in the restaurant.
Sometimes we would go on inspection to other hotels of the company and all expenses would be paid for by the company.

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I read about the Thai culture and how the people work, about their religion, the food and the general day to day life.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? Somewhat. The language barrier is much greater than I expected and there have been a few miscommunications which made it impossible for me to do my work the way I liked to. Furthermore, the supervisor did not have much faith in the staff and this resulted in me not being able to do much as I would only get small basic assignments

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: x-valerie@live.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Try everything interesting. The people are very kind and what to show you and introduce you to their culture.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: The whole city of Bangkok is filled with exciting and fun leisure possibilities. Every day there is something fun to do. Definitely ask your coworkers for advice, look on TripAdvisor and sign up for MeetUp, a fun app through which you can meet new people and hang out at fun places.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link