Andalucía Tours and Discovery

Placement organization

Name of organization: Andalucía Tours and Discovery
Town/city: Sevilla
Country: Spanje
Website: https://atdspain.com/

Student

Name of student: Danielle van Veen

Specialist area: Tourism Management (EN)
Placement period: 2019-2020

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: bike tour company
Organization’s activities: ATD Spain organizes bike tours in the sunny city of Seville, from bike tours that show the highlights of the city to tapas tours and countryside bike tours. Besides that they also organize private tours on request and it is possible to rent bikes at ATD Spain.
Target group of the organization: tourists between 30 and 65 years old
Company culture: ATD Spain has an informal culture and it feels very open here. Because it is quite loud in the office sometimes, this might not be the place for you if you are distracted very easily. Aside from that, everyone has their own tasks, but you also need to be flexible and do some other jobs every now and then, for example I took care of the social media management, but throughout my placement here, I also designed signage for in the store and some other small graphic designs.
Number of employees: 5-15
Dress code: uniform
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 social media department

Brief description of your daily activities: Twice a week I gave a bike tour to clients, I mostly did Dutch tours, but every now and then I also did an English tour. Besides that, I was working on the management of the social media of ATD Spain, first I started off with the Twitter page. Creating content is a big part of the job. So you have to know what is going on in the city, make sure you know what events are upcoming and share these in time. It also involves going out in the city and taking a lot of pictures to upload on Instagram and Facebook as well. Every week, I also edited a video every week called ‘This Was Our Week’ were we show how we spent our week at ATD Spain. For this placement, you need to be creative and think outside of the box sometimes. You have to write a lot of content and write blogs as well, so it is a must to be a good writer.
Brief description of your company assignment: My company assigment was about implementing an online consumer engagement strategy for ATD Spain. So how can ATD Spain engage better with its followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? This involved analyzing statistics that I retrieved every week from analytical programs and trying out different strategies and analyzing the results of those.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Rosalie was a great supervisor that gives you a lot of trust and freedom to do your tasks. So this placement requires you to be capable to work by yourself. Of course, you can always ask her questions at all times. There is no ‘head of the social media managament’ so you have to figure out quite some stuff out by yourself. Luckily there was another intern in my first weeks that trained me for my tasks.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Independent, flexible, sociable, creative, fluent in English
Additional company requirements for this placement? Ms Office, PhotoShop, iMovie or another video editing program, but you also can learn these programs in your first weeks here
English: Advanced
Spanish: Basic
Other languages: Preferably also Dutch or another language (French, German, Italian)

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? Through Airbnb, when you rent long term, you often get a huge discount
How did you go to work every day? By foot 30 minutes

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? I would recommend you to learn basic Spanish for in your private life her in Spain

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 180
Accommodation (monthly): € 270
Local transport (monthly): € 20
General costs of living (monthly): € 200
Costs of visa: €
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? The company gives a financial compensation at the end of the placement

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I just watched some videos and read some things, but I also let the Spanish culture surprise me. You work from 9:15-13:30 and 16:45-20:30, so you will be home quite late and have to adjust your schedule to the siësta as well.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? I had to get used to the siësta in the beginning and the working hours so I was a little less focused working from 16:45-20:30

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: 182495@buas.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Do: Find your room via Airbnb. You can get scammed through other prices. Also be open to not living in the city center itself, I lived in the quarter ‘Los Remedios’ and I had everything I needed here as well, it is also a lot quieter then the city center itself.
Once a month you get a saturday and sunday free and if you can combine that with your usual 2 days off in the week, you have 4 days off in a row. Defenitely go on a trip to another city! I went with Flixbus to Lisbon for just 25 euros return and I went on a grouptrip with the organization We Love Spain to Morocco as well. I also recommend going to the acuario de Sevilla.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: If you want to go for a swim, take the metro to Montequinto and go to the municipal swimming pool over there. When it is hot you can relax in the maria luisa park.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link