Memorable 20 days of internship. *I wished I can do longer*

The great four weeks flew by quickly, I feel sad and hard to leave my placement especially during my last day. I missed my time working at the Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort & Spa. I had a great opportunity to experience so many different segments of public relations, and been able to perform as well as trying to get myself a high level of achievement in such a short period of time. Here is what I have reflected and learnt from my time during my internship:

Internship has offered me an opportunity to test my abilities and attitudes toward certain prospects for the future and to take a big step from my comfort zone. I believed that learning in class is important, however, it does not provide students the value of real working experience to prepare ourselves for a career after graduation. Therefore, exposure to the workplace environment is needed to build a link between learning in the university and application in the work environment. In my opinion, internship act as a form of experimental learning to discover the professional world firsthand and to apply student’s knowledge to practice. 

In addition, internships enhance my skill development. I was able to talk confidently in public speaking and voicing my opinions to fellow colleagues. I was given the opportunity to observe the work of others and learn from their own job responsibilities. I learnt how to write and crafted an article by using the suitable word and simple to understand by stakeholders. I felt comfortable enough to speak up when I felt things could be changed or improved.

At first, I was scared I would do many mistakes but I would said as I do the work, I get better and better after I practice a lot completing a task. Whatever my supervisor ask me to do, I would have a go and ask question if there is anything I do not understand, and what I normally did was my supervisor go over it afterwards and she will let me know what I could do to make it better in that particular task she assigned. My supervisor constantly asked me for my feedback; even on her own work; which I really appreciated, and I feel like I did my bit to make pieces of work even better compared to my university assignments. I agreed advise and feedback is always good to take to level up your skill and it is a valuable. 

I also reflect that by gaining this experience and exposure allows me as a student to determine what qualities and characteristics are actually valuable when it comes to being successful in a job or internship. While university exposure and internship learning have their differences, knowledge that I learned from tutorials, seminar and lectures can be practical to workplace situations, tasks, and activities. I can link some of the theory from the class and took it as a practice in the working space as I mentioned in previous blog. You don’t know what to expect, what your jobs will be like and what you will have to do is just willing to go along to anything and be productive as you can because you will never know how priceless the experience you gain is. Always prepared yourself for new lessons everyday as a famous quote spotted 

" never stop learning because life never stops teaching"

I know that my time there has been such a great experience. The backbone of the resort is genuinely incredible. I have had the pleasure of working with some friendly, creative thinking, professionals and inspirational people that have really helped me to discover exactly what parts of public relations I love, and where my strengths and weaknesses lie. This internship programme has been exciting and opened my eyes and learns that practices improve our skill beyond what we can really achieve in the future.

This is my final blog, I would like to thank you for those attentively partake reading my blog. I’m wishing you all the best in future careers. I hope you enjoy your experience as fruitful and enjoyable as mine!

Best of wishes,

Melanie Alexandria Lawrence

17625348

Curtin Sarawak Campus

Experience shaped my confidence (Part 2)

4. Media groups contains bring contains to the audience. In PR, we studied that how journalist, magazine’s editors, television host, travel bloggers and other media influencers can generate a huge publicity for a company. In Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort & Spa are welcome these media group to enjoy complimentary stay and the facilities in the hotel in exchange or in return, they will give a slot of advertisement, a page of reviews or even a blog post in the newspaper, blogs, social media, magazine and other agencies that involves the travel and tourism content and to boost their brand. These complimentary offers are divided to GRADE A+, A, B, and C types in regards to the person position and what the media group published.

5.     Every morning since my first 3 days in my internship programme, I will be the one who will down go down to the lobby and collect all the newspaper on behalf of the communication department. I feel this job make me happy although it is a simple task and enjoyed myself looking at the hotel guest very pleasant with their holidays. I still remember how the environment made my day even more energetic to start my work every single day. Most of my daily routine will be reading the newspaper. At first, I don’t really know what to do for media clippings (how to start off, what do I need to find). As  days goes on, my supervisor and senior executive, ask me to cut a part of the newspaper and read again, I began to understand that media clippings is about how the news article would impact the hotel related to travel and tourism organisation, economy, terrorist attack, local issues and airlines.

6.     As Lorraine share her part on MICE visiting Shangri-La’s Rasa Ria Resort & Spa. I would like to share my part during MICE went for visit a few days ahead in my placement, they are welcome with a short traditional dance and music as VIP’s of the hotel and special greeting by all the division heads, department heads, managers and executives. In the evening, I was asked by my supervisor to take a video during the evening cultural dance by the locals and activities they did. Marketing department team were quite happy that I utilise my media knowledge I had gained over three years studying in Curtin for the video.Before the MICE group have their dinner, they exchange contacts and how the events are smoothly done by the marketing department. I told myself that day I have a lot of things to learn in the future and how I remind myself to be always working hard. That day before I went back, I told my supervisor, “I hoped the video is okay.” She told me this every single time, I ask her if my work is ok,

“Never look down on yourself, we all are learning every day.”

7.     Last but not least, I am truly amazed how every department work hard. I want to share a little thing. I don’t know if your placement is better than mine. But I feel a bit special in my placement because although communication department has share a same working space with the marketing department. As I learned in Cross Cultural Communication, how culture make it easier for the company. I have three international working for the both Shangri-La’s hotel in Sabah, they are taking care of their respective country market such as China, Japan and Korea. The three of them communicate with their agency with their mother tongue but talking with us as colleagues, we speak English. One of the interesting part of being working with these hotel.  

It’s such a blessing for me, although there is only 20 working days, I never had a plenty of work that needs an extra pair of hands to complete. One of the tasks that I have enjoyed the most is doing research on bloggers, Wedding Menu Package’s proofreading and writing information to be uploaded to the Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort & Spa website. It has been really amazed seeing the detail and how it was sensibly constructed each piece of information is before publishing.

Do share your thoughts!

Regards,

Melanie Alexandria Lawrence

17625348

Curtin Sarawak Campus

Experience shaped my confidence (Part 1)

Internships have helped me relate what I have learned in the university and implement it to what I do in my placement. Eventually, internship has made me reflect on how I boost my experience as a learner through appreciation for the experience and self-confidence in my abilities. I have the opportunity to reflect on and perceive experiences from many perspectives and its encouraging me to examine issues that arose in the internship. In addition, this knowledge has been helping me reflect on better ways to handle upcoming situations in the workplace and to know the brand and the brand identity better. I also realised that to be one with the brand, you certainly have to know who your target audience is, how you promote it and what is your uniqueness.

1.  was in charge taking of the Tripadvisor reviews. Every morning before I start off with duty, I will read all the comments from Tripadvisor.  Normally, the hotel would get a lot of positive feedback.  Before I was assigned to do this task, my collegue told me that I also need to be alert if there is any negative feedback from the guests or events. One morning, when I checked the reviews, negative feedback by one of the events held in the hotel so I immediately informed Miss Claudina, the Director of Communication to handle the situation and she point out this matter to event management and the whole director of each department in the early morning meeting. My point here is that as PR practitioner and we need to give a fast response neither good nor negative feedback to avoid bad reputation of the organization.
2. I learnt PR can also play a key role in keeping lines of communication open at times of industrial tension. In PR context, crises is understand as an emergency turns into a significantly impacts on an organisation’s reputation or its ability to function normally. for I get the chance to go through the crisis management file the organization I worked so what I had studied ten-step of communication in PR class has the same similar to it. Take for an example, Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort & Spa has been prepared the PR Crisis Plan is divided to several division and what respective department should react during the emergency or crisis situation. They also ready templates for holding statement and contact list of emergency including the government agencies, media and embassy of several countries.
3.  #LoyaltyIs a campaign of their Golden Circle 5^th Anniversary by Shangri-La’s Hotels & Resorts to encourage their audience, potential and current stakeholders as a participatory in the campaign. The campaign itself promotes by photographers, staffs and celebrities what is the meaning of loyalty personally to them. There are several videos was posted in their Youtuube channel, Facebook and a 10 sec video glimpse in Instagram. Plus, many of the internet user give support and collaboration what #LoyaltyIs in all the social media sites. This definitely puts all that theory in the seminars to practice. I want to voice out because recently this participatory culture or transmedia storytelling has been a trend to all companies in the world.
4. 
   

   

   #LOYALTYIS contest

To be continued....

Cheers,

Melanie Alexandria Lawrence

17625348

Curtin Sarawak Campus 

A sense of character

Well, I assume most of us have finished your intern in your respective placement. But guys, let us look where we are. This is my second time working in a hotel, I sincerely admire that a successful hotel comes from a fantastic productivity by the hotel management and operations.

Exciting to know what I do during commencing my internship in Shangri-La Tanjung Aru. Here we go. Another chapter of where I put myself back from comfort zone since the first week when I met Miss Claudina which is the Director of Communication and my supervisor. She is a wonderful person and example of public relations professional and role model to me. She showed me how professionalism worked and how the tone we use to speak with other people matters and the attitude of been punctual, submit task before deadline, keep asking for updates one tasks to another they are working on and make sure it is keep on track.

I should also mention that I did not worry at all about adapting into the team or going to meet some of my colleagues with years of experiencing the hospitality industry. To tell you the truth, I’m not really an office person doing the paperwork and I’m more too so called outdoor activities doing survey, checking what is going on outside the office as well as meeting clients is what I like to do the most. In matter of fact, as a communication officer, I totally observed the little information that I gain from engaging through the other staffs that they make me understand how the hotel system works and handle hotel guests with care. They all made me feel welcome and were happy to have someone to provide different insights or views on various issues.

As an intern in hospitality industry, we are dealing with guests, the media, business associates and supplier coming from around the globe in a professional, business-like manner. Since the first day I worked, we are told that we are not allowed to say or do the 4 GUEST SERVICE SINS which are the saying ‘NO’, ‘I don’t know’, ‘I can’t do’, ‘You’ll have to’. Despite, we as the staff, we are trained and responsible to guide the hotel’s guest to get want they want or direct them the destination they need to be. That’s how ethics work and professionalism way to do it.

To summarise, I noticed that has been influence in my attitude because I was supervised by amazing team and they teach me how to follow the best practices of completing a task given by our superior. My training has involves contributing in doing businesses, improve customer service with integrity, to provide benefit such as guest satisfaction, working independent, stay humility and most important of all, interact with stakeholders to achieve a set of goals. Would like to end my blog for an inspiration of mine, Mr. President Barack Obama.

Let me know or share a comment below, if is there any similar or other ethics applied in your organisation?

Sincerely,

Melanie Alexandria Lawrence

17625348

Curtin Sarawak Campus