Brief description of the past two-week’s duties
I have performed many duties over the last few weeks. In addition, I have continued to innovate and find new avenues for furthering my roles and responsibilities in order to better my skills and abilities. My first duty and primary role as a food and beverage representative is to help serve food and drinks to passengers on our sunset dinner cruises. Fulfilling this responsibility continues to be an enjoyable experience. Another duty that I have performed over the last two weeks has been placing reservations for Vagabond Cruise tours.
One such cruise that I placed an emphasis on selling and upselling has been our Wine and Cheese sail. In short, this cruise boards our 42-foot catamaran sail boat and offers complimentary house wines and cheese platters. With a maximum capacity of 24 passengers, I made it a personal goal of mine to sell this cruise to ensure that it would indeed sail. As such, through my efforts I am proud to announce that the Wine and Cheese sold out each week. Beyond these duties, I have continued to market through social media outlets as well as monitor inventories levels and place purchase orders for supplies and materials.
How are you experiencing a relevant and challenging use of your skills?
The last two weeks have significantly induced a demand of my time and furthermore has challenged the use of my skills. The biggest challenge I faced, involved dealing with frustrated customers after their cruise was canceled due to poor weather. On October 26, 2013, our Sunset Sail tour was canceled after a strong rainstorm hit Hilton Head Island. Being the only employee in our ticketing booth at the time, I was solely responsible for overcoming objections and likewise accountable for refunding every customer’s tickets. This scenario was very challenging and required me to instill patience, as I had to refund 100 passengers in a quick and efficient manner.
Furthermore, this scenario required me to embody positive interpersonal communication skills in talking with customers as well I comforted them and reassured them of our company regret and apology for their canceled tour. Even though this experience was challenging, in hindsight I am glad that I had to overcome this situation because it refined my customer service skills and helped me better work under strenuous circumstances.
What did you learn from your experiences?
There is one distinct concept, which I have learned over the last two weeks from my experiences with Vagabond Cruise. The first principle that I learned is how important timeshare presentations are to bringing success to tourism operations. Over the last two weeks, I had the opportunity to work with our Marketing Director in working with timeshare salespeople. These experiences helped me realize just how self-reliant Vagabond Cruise is on the many resorts located throughout Hilton Head Island. Similarly, this has also helped me realize that strong business partnerships are critical to establishing long lasting success to a company and organization.
What worked well?
Over the last two weeks, I made it a personal initiative to give positive feedback not only to my fellow interns but to also all those in whom I work with. This was extremely beneficial as it helped to strengthen our chemistry at work. On the same note, I started to notice that the more I complimented others, the more people reciprocated the action by recognizing my efforts and complimenting my strong suits. Ultimately, this strategy has helped me strengthen my relationships with my colleagues and has helped each member on our team feel valued both as individuals and as a collective unit.
What would you change next time?
On a general statement, the last two weeks have transitioned very smoothly with very little to no disruptions or setbacks. However, as I reflect on these last two weeks there is one moment that I wish I had dealt better with. In short, on October 22, 2013 I was scheduled to work the pm shift in our ticketing booth. It is important to note, that the pm shift is by far the busier shift and can be quite demanding especially since we have six different cruises departing simultaneously during the evening. Anyways, on this day I came into work and have a few hours before the rush of our customers came. Seeing this two-hour window, I left the ticket booth so I could take an important phone call of which I intended to be very short. Unfortunately, the phone call took much longer than expected and regrettably meant I left Danny alone in our ticketing booth. By the time I came back in our ticketing booth, Danny had been very tied down resolving customer inquiries and was in dire need of my assistance. As such, I quickly jumped in, took care of the rest of the customers at our booth, and talked with all the customer phone calls on hold.
Overall, I wish I had not walked out our ticketing booth on this day so that I could have been available to help Danny. In my defense, I left the office at a dead time but regardless I wish I had just rescheduled my phone call so that I could have given my every attention and effort to helping the customers at our booth. Even though we resolved the situation, my actions on this day are the only measure over the last weeks, which I would have changed.
Please describe the supervision you are receiving.
Frequently working with my supervisors is a great experience because it allows me to have one on one conversation with them and allows me to receive feedback on my performance. In other words, I work with my managers and thus I technically receive constant supervision. However, after working here for over ten weeks, beyond the times I work with my supervisors, I receive very little supervision. In fact, my owner and our management team has told all the fall interns, such as myself, that they are confident in our abilities to run the bulk of our operations. Similarly, we as interns feel very compatible to this belief because we all feel very competent in our abilities after having several weeks of experience under our belts. Thus, in this sense I receive very little supervision beyond the few times I work with my superiors each week.
I have performed many duties over the last few weeks. In addition, I have continued to innovate and find new avenues for furthering my roles and responsibilities in order to better my skills and abilities. My first duty and primary role as a food and beverage representative is to help serve food and drinks to passengers on our sunset dinner cruises. Fulfilling this responsibility continues to be an enjoyable experience. Another duty that I have performed over the last two weeks has been placing reservations for Vagabond Cruise tours.
One such cruise that I placed an emphasis on selling and upselling has been our Wine and Cheese sail. In short, this cruise boards our 42-foot catamaran sail boat and offers complimentary house wines and cheese platters. With a maximum capacity of 24 passengers, I made it a personal goal of mine to sell this cruise to ensure that it would indeed sail. As such, through my efforts I am proud to announce that the Wine and Cheese sold out each week. Beyond these duties, I have continued to market through social media outlets as well as monitor inventories levels and place purchase orders for supplies and materials.
How are you experiencing a relevant and challenging use of your skills?
The last two weeks have significantly induced a demand of my time and furthermore has challenged the use of my skills. The biggest challenge I faced, involved dealing with frustrated customers after their cruise was canceled due to poor weather. On October 26, 2013, our Sunset Sail tour was canceled after a strong rainstorm hit Hilton Head Island. Being the only employee in our ticketing booth at the time, I was solely responsible for overcoming objections and likewise accountable for refunding every customer’s tickets. This scenario was very challenging and required me to instill patience, as I had to refund 100 passengers in a quick and efficient manner.
Furthermore, this scenario required me to embody positive interpersonal communication skills in talking with customers as well I comforted them and reassured them of our company regret and apology for their canceled tour. Even though this experience was challenging, in hindsight I am glad that I had to overcome this situation because it refined my customer service skills and helped me better work under strenuous circumstances.
What did you learn from your experiences?
There is one distinct concept, which I have learned over the last two weeks from my experiences with Vagabond Cruise. The first principle that I learned is how important timeshare presentations are to bringing success to tourism operations. Over the last two weeks, I had the opportunity to work with our Marketing Director in working with timeshare salespeople. These experiences helped me realize just how self-reliant Vagabond Cruise is on the many resorts located throughout Hilton Head Island. Similarly, this has also helped me realize that strong business partnerships are critical to establishing long lasting success to a company and organization.
What worked well?
Over the last two weeks, I made it a personal initiative to give positive feedback not only to my fellow interns but to also all those in whom I work with. This was extremely beneficial as it helped to strengthen our chemistry at work. On the same note, I started to notice that the more I complimented others, the more people reciprocated the action by recognizing my efforts and complimenting my strong suits. Ultimately, this strategy has helped me strengthen my relationships with my colleagues and has helped each member on our team feel valued both as individuals and as a collective unit.
What would you change next time?
On a general statement, the last two weeks have transitioned very smoothly with very little to no disruptions or setbacks. However, as I reflect on these last two weeks there is one moment that I wish I had dealt better with. In short, on October 22, 2013 I was scheduled to work the pm shift in our ticketing booth. It is important to note, that the pm shift is by far the busier shift and can be quite demanding especially since we have six different cruises departing simultaneously during the evening. Anyways, on this day I came into work and have a few hours before the rush of our customers came. Seeing this two-hour window, I left the ticket booth so I could take an important phone call of which I intended to be very short. Unfortunately, the phone call took much longer than expected and regrettably meant I left Danny alone in our ticketing booth. By the time I came back in our ticketing booth, Danny had been very tied down resolving customer inquiries and was in dire need of my assistance. As such, I quickly jumped in, took care of the rest of the customers at our booth, and talked with all the customer phone calls on hold.
Overall, I wish I had not walked out our ticketing booth on this day so that I could have been available to help Danny. In my defense, I left the office at a dead time but regardless I wish I had just rescheduled my phone call so that I could have given my every attention and effort to helping the customers at our booth. Even though we resolved the situation, my actions on this day are the only measure over the last weeks, which I would have changed.
Please describe the supervision you are receiving.
Frequently working with my supervisors is a great experience because it allows me to have one on one conversation with them and allows me to receive feedback on my performance. In other words, I work with my managers and thus I technically receive constant supervision. However, after working here for over ten weeks, beyond the times I work with my supervisors, I receive very little supervision. In fact, my owner and our management team has told all the fall interns, such as myself, that they are confident in our abilities to run the bulk of our operations. Similarly, we as interns feel very compatible to this belief because we all feel very competent in our abilities after having several weeks of experience under our belts. Thus, in this sense I receive very little supervision beyond the few times I work with my superiors each week.
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