Business Travel and Selling

As you are all aware, Im away on the 1st year tourism students educational trip to go horse riding, jet boating, walking, biking and sitting in hot springs next week! You will have no classes with me on Tuesday or Thursday but Hillary will facilitate the Business Travel class on Wednesday afternoon. However!!!  please complete the exercises under Selling (13) on cross-selling and upselling  on wikieducator so we can practise your techniques the next week. Don’t forget your Motivation assessment which must be in my mailbox by Tue 07 Apr.

Attention!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lboogiepeace/2946530812/

As we are nearing the end of this specialty – for you as students the pressure certainly increases. On Friday, in marketing we will be looking at the most important marketing tool “Branding”. It is important you have a good grasp of the value of branding so I look forward to your attendance in class at 9am not 10.10am or 10.30am.

While attendance in class is not always necessary or achievable for various reasons, the true value of flexible delivery is reliant on all forms of information being accessed eg. you must work through the wiki – that means reading all the links, everything that is put in the student drive and taking the time to do some further investigation on your own. At this level is about self management, being proactive, participating and motivating yourself and taking pride in your work. Next I’ll be asking if you made your bed this morning. Did you?

Reservations

We are in our final weeks of Fidelio. Tomorrow, Wednesday 25 April we are going to look at group bookings. Please make sure you attend class on time so that you get the full instruction of group reservations. On Thursday you will complete the correspondence activity on the wiki. Don’t be fooled on April 1st, we do have class! We will go over group bookings, check-in’s, posting charges so that you are ready for your assessment on 8th April and 9th April. You will not gain your unit standard if you have not completed the work. In class recently we have been discussing some of the special requests that customers like, check out the Benjamin Hotel and their pillow menu. Westin hotels also sell their products to customers if you have enjoyed them in their hotels.  Explore some other hotels to see what they offer.

Friday’s work

There will be no class this Friday however I would like you to continue working from the wiki – section 6. Go through the slide share presentation (what is a destination) then complete the activity “these destinations”. Take a look at TNZ link and the annual report please don’t print this out (60 pages). It is important that you have a clear understanding of what Tourism New Zealand is and does. Be ready to summarise this for me on Monday.

Have a good weekend and thanks for handing in your TALC activity.

Students travelling via the net

Thought I would get the students to take a look around wikitravel http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page and even get them to make a post to it. What do you as students think about that?

Using your blogs

http://flickr.com/photos/seamusnyc/347748290/

Hi guys

Thought I would introduce a way for you to regularly use your blogs which would also benefit your studies. Each week it would be great if you would summarise what you have been studying, and points that you particularly want to remember. Its a good way to keep track of what you are doing and its a great reference when it comes to your assignments.

Next Friday we will also look at a good way for you to see what everyone else is writing on their blogs.

Have a good week.

Next course

We will be running this course again in February 2009. It has had a name change (previously Reception Services) and now places a stronger focus on selling, marketing and business travel.

by danperry.com

Language skills

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neumeyer/24102314/

To make your travel experience more enjoyable it is essential to learn words and phrases from the native language of the country you are visiting. Susan and Daniel will be introducing the class to common phrases in Chinese, German and French and we will investigate what resources are available on the internet for learning Italian and Fijian.

Service Excellence

Successful companies place great emphasis on service excellence because they understand that good service results in:

• building loyal customers and attracting new ones
• leads to strong word-of-mouth
• reduces the level of complaints
• reinforces work efficiency and satisfaction
• adds value to the product they provide – often justifies charging higher prices – many people are willing to pay more for a pleasant buying experience

Achieving an Agreement

Many people believe that agreement reaching techniques are only valuable for front-line-to-the-public sales, here are some more examples of when they are used.

1. A convention centre offers to provide free meeting room if a company stages its trade show there
2. An airline’s direct-mail promises extra mileage points for certain flights during a certain period of time
3. An employee justifies his/her value to a company and asks for a raise

Now you know the techniques its time to practise them.