EF Educational Tours

Placement organization

Name of organization: EF Educational Tours
Town/city: London
Country: Groot-Brittannië
Website: https://www.eftours.com

Student

Name of student: Shawnee Mensink

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

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Educational Touroperator
Organization’s activities: EF is the world’s largest student travel organization. EF Tours provides educational travel experiences. In the Regional Office of London we provide everything for the Tour Directors (guides who accompany the tours).
Target group of the organization: American and Canadian teachers / schools
Company culture: There is quite an informal atmosphere in the office. On Fridays two of my colleagues bring their dogs to the office and you can wear jeans and sneakers. On the other days it is more formal because more tour directors come to the office and more meetings take place. Everyone is extremely kind and fun! When I first came in I immediately felt welcome.
Number of employees: 4 in the office, but thousands within EF
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working?

The London Regional Office

Brief description of your daily activities: Sending out the itineraries and travel information via email prior to the tours and evaluations after the tours to the Tour Directors – preparing and posting out tour materials to the Tour Directors – distribution of local transport tickets, Paris metro tickets and train tickets – answering questions from Tour Directors relating to their tours in person, by e-mail or by phone and resourcing a network within the company in order to be able to answer these questions – distribution and selling of TD Link (tablet / handheld pocket PC) devices for the Tour Directors

Brief description of your company assignment: I had to research what the Tour Directors think of the new Tour Director app which went into effect on 1 March 2020. Before the app, which they have to download on their personal device, they worked with EF tablets. I also researched the change from the tablets to the app.

Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: My supervisor was really good! She helped me a lot with my daily activities and my assignments. She was always on time with filling out the assessment forms and her feedback was really helpful.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Stress-proof, teamplayer and sociable as a lot of people come by the office
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office
English: Advanced

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? I found it on Spareroom, but you can also try to join various Facebook groups like ‘Dutch girls in London’ or ‘I am Dutch and living in the UK’
How did you go to work every day? By tube, I lived in Shepherd’s Bush and the journey took about 20 minutes from door to door.

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? My English wasn’t really good but not bad either, but after two weeks or so living in London my English had already improved a lot.

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 160 (suitcases included)
Accommodation (monthly): € 900
Local transport (monthly): € 150
General costs of living (monthly): € 300
Costs of visa: €
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? £8 for lunch every working day, a monthly travel card and a return ticket to and from London.

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
I read about London and living in London on various websites and I made a list of what I wanted to see and what restaurants I wanted to visit.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? I had to get used to some British words they used.

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: 172629@buas.nl

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: I would recommend to find a place in zone 1 or 2 as it’s easy accessible and I believe the company only pays for a travel card zone 1-2. So if you live in a further zone, you have to pay part of the local transport yourself. Besides that, London is more expensive than The Netherlands so please keep this in mind!
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: London is my favorite city ever! There are so many possibilities. The placement company is located on Oxford Street (THE famous shopping street), so I often went shopping after work. Besides that I would recommend to visit Notting Hill, Covent Garden Market, Camden Town, the Natural History Museum, Trafalgar Square and Puttshack (mini golf). For food I would recommend to visit The Ivy Grill, Duck & Waffle (the best view + cocktails) and Shake Shack. Unfortunately, because of the coronavirus, I had to return to The Netherlands after two months so I was unable to visit everything I wanted. I will definitely go back to this amazing city!

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