My name is Rebecca Stubley and for my PR393 Placement unit I
am interning for 20 days at Tourism WA. I am completing my PR Placement in
Tourism WA’s Destination PR department. The aim of Destination PR is to create
opportunities for positive exposure of the destination in travel and lifestyle
media in order to educate and inspire potential travellers about the
extraordinary holiday experiences on offer in Western Australia. On my first
day I was very nervous. Starting with having to choose what to wear! Then when
I got into the office I found that everyone was very welcoming and the
atmosphere was a lot more relaxed and casual than I expected.
The offices are on
the 8th floor with amazing views of Kings Park and the river. Rather
than do a one on one induction about Destination PR I was invited to sit in on
a Famil brief. This is a meeting with international media (in this case a German
journalist) where they explain Tourism WA and the various departments, and how
it can be utilised to show international media groups around to generate media
articles to promote WA to various international target markets.
Back in the office I had a chat with my supervisor about what
I was hoping to get out of my time at tourism WA and I was able to ask a lot of
questions about the operations, dynamics and roles in the Destination PR team
of Tourism WA. She was very willing to answer all my questions but I soon
realised that it was going to take me more than one day to understand the
dynamics and operations of Public Relations in Tourism WA.
Then I was given my first task. A UK journalist had requested
information on Albany in WA’s South West. This entailed me updating and
revamping pre written Albany destination information. After receiving feedback
from my supervisor I emailed it to a UK journalist for a feature article. This
was good because it gave me a chance to look through the Destination
Information files to see the way Tourism WA get information and their message
across.
I am really happy I get to do my placement at Tourism WA.
The team are very approachable and I am looking forward to putting the PR
skills I have learnt in my PR units into practice.
2 comments:
Hi Rebecca,
It sounds as though you’re enjoying your internship so far and lucky you for having such a great view of the city!
It is difficult to understand how a business works with only experiencing twenty days work with them. There is much more to learn than we will be exposed to over such a short period of time. The only way to achieve this is to stay engaged, interested and ask about a million questions so you can fully understand how a business works! There are times when I ask my supervisor where I am completing my internship and they aren’t even sure the answer to my question.
Tourism WA would be an interesting place to complete an internship as you would be able to further develop your understanding of Perth as a tourist destination.
Kind regards
Lydia
Hi Rebecca!
It sounds like you have chosen an awesome place to do your internship - Tourism WA would be pretty exciting with lots of opportunity to grow your PR skills. I would love to experience working there.
Even though we have learnt this over the course of our PR units, I have found from my internship that public relations really is such a broad profession that overlaps with many other themes including admin, marketing, journalism and advertising. From the sounds of things, it seems yours might be similar.
Hope you enjoy your placement, looking forward to reading your updates!
Delta
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