Learning Agreement Essay

In R Tours, I was assigned in the Inbound Department and I learned a lot from there. One of the grievous duties in the department is the inbound operation. The inbound operation consists of several tasks. First to create interesting and tenuous fling packages, then, promote them locally and internationally and finally handling them. We may receive request or booking by telephone, fax, letter or email from individuals, local and international concourses.Most of the time a normal booking will have information on the type of bit package chosen, the aloofness of stay, the number of people and additional services required such as a buffet effect up instead of an a la carte menu or providing the welcome drink in the airport instead of the hotel. Normally we reply by thanking the person or the foreign comp all considers and we allow in all the necessary information such as the detailed itinerary, the cost of the act and most alpha our confirmation for handling the tour. Then we will wait to get a confirmation from them before scratch to make all arrangements and preparations.The confirmation includes the involution and time of arrival, the flight number if they are arriving by airplane, name calling plus passport numbers of clients and the rooming list. It is only after receiving the confirmation that we begin to work on position and preparing the booking of hotels, restaurants, transportation vehicles, museum tickets and sometimes airlines tickets if they are intend to fly to the south of the country. We also, arrange the visas and prepare the buy the farm insurance. We assign people who are going to take care of the group such as tour leader, tour guide and driver.Then we prepare the reservation forms and we send them to our suppliers. The reservation form includes the services put across and the number of pax and sometimes more information according to the kind of supplier. In a cause of a hotel for example, the reservation form will include extra information such as the date of checking in and out, the number and what type of room and type of payment. Suppliers may be hotel, resort, motel, museum, restaurant, theme park, car rental, labour-coach comp both, a marina, a diving center or anything else.During peak season we have difficulties in getting the rightly accommodation or some other services that was mentioned in the tour package, in this kind of site we, must think of an alternative and inform the client about the changes and finally when both of us bear we proceed with the arrangement. The next task is to handle the group from the first day to the last day. The most important rule with the western group is being punctual because they are used to it and they do not care to wait for anything or anybody even from their own group. Make sure everything goes according to the itinerary timing.All the employees and suppliers involve must take this into consideration. In case of lateness they may complaint and even ask f or refund for that particular(a) service. All the time make sure that everything is ready in advance. For example, during the arrival day, the tour guide and the motor coach must be present at the airport at least one hr before the plane lands and provide the tour guide with a small board having the name of the group to make it easier for the group to find him. We need to monitor the group every single day and check in touch with the tour leader.All the international groups have their tour leader and building an delicate communication or relation with him or her is really important because the tour leader is the one in charge of the entire group and he or she plays a very important role to find that the tour is conducted as planned. Carrying daily briefing with him or her helps to find out what happened the day before and if any change has to be done for the next day. In the department we need to carry meetings to resolve any kind of problem during the tour. I learned to build strong relation with our suppliers to minimize the problem and complications.In the beginning I was facing umpteen problems of getting what I wanted and it used to take age of negotiation before getting it. I realized that certain suppliers such as five star hotels or dine dining restaurants were not responding positively to our request because they were preferring to deal directly with the customers or with reputed tour operator company. According to their opinion, we were not qualified or capable of bringing much lineage and I was really disappointed by their discrimination and behavior but my personal and communication skills helped me to accomplish some(prenominal) I wanted from them.It is sad to realize that they are used to work this way, they dont intimately collaborate with small companies and I needed to win their trust. Finally they decided to really do business with me and everything was functional smoothly after that. I think and believe that these hotels or any other suppliers should cooperate and build a better relationship with the small tour operators in order to benefit from separately other. I definitely agree that we were not in the same level as those large tour operators such as Z Tours but we proved to these hotels income as well.However, I was pleased that after many months of hard work, we were able to increase the number of bookings with them month after month. During my time spent in R Tours, I learned to better understand the procedure of handling tour packages. Now I am more confident of myself and well prepared due to all the experience that I had acquired while working there. I would like to conclude by saying that inbound operation is about using your capabilities, laborious your strength in all the different tasks involves and be able to solve any problem fortuity during the tour by relating to your learning experience at the work place.