Conference & Events Assistant Review

I really enjoyed my placement, it helped me find myself and grew up a lot. It was a wake up call and a peak into the future of how life would be in my desired profession. It was not alway roses, there were times where I wanted to quit but I wanted to see my placement through. It also helped me see that not everything in life would be smooth sailing.

I really felt valued by my colleagues, not just in the department I worked in but in the various departments in the hotel. I am a very shy individual but I felt that the Holiday Inn welcomed and looked after me very well and this helped me come out of my shell.

I started my placement at the start of the busy season, so I was thrown into the deep end, which I look back at now and I am very thankful because I got to learn and pick up my skills at a rapid rate. However regardless of being thrown into the deep end, I received support from management whenever I needed it and whenever I requested it.

During busy weeks it was easy to work up to twelve or thirteen hours per day, but during quiet weeks, I would work eight hours. Busy weeks usually entailed having quite a few meetings during the day and then a function in the evening, which would need setting up, hence the extra hours.

In the beginning of the placement, naturally you are still being trained on how to do things correctly and to according the hotels brand standards, but after three months, I began to get entrusted to look after meetings from start to finish. My biggest accomplishment was hosting a hen party, which was successful.

I learnt how to work under pressure and still produce excellent results, and how to multi-task, this personally showed me that I could take on various projects at once and still produce excellent results. I learnt how to be accountable and how to lead a team which is excellent for my degree as I am studying a management course.

In my office, although it was always busy every team member was always in a positive mood and it had a lot of banter as well. So even on early winter mornings you would not mind coming into work because the positive moods of the managers would just lift you up and you would be in high spirits for the rest of the day.

The placement set up was organised very well, with regular check-ups from the university and from the managers as well.

When I first started the placement I received about three days of training, and every month or two would get refresher courses on certain things. The company would have exciting training courses attempting to incorporate different colleagues ideas for how each training sessions would go.

Future prospects in the hospitality industry are endless, and some are very appealing, however to work up to a top management job will take a lot of endurance and persistence as I learnt.

There definitely was a good social scene amongst the colleagues. The company was made up of people of different ages but everyone made an effort to include each other in various activities, from pub crawls, to paintball and go-karting. Although everyone in the hotel worked long hours, colleagues made an effort to socialise outside work at least once a month.

Living in Stratford was not too bad because we had staff accommodation so the rent was very affordable and it was about a seven minute walk from the hotel. There are many restaurants and pubs in Stratford and as an employee of Holiday Inn i receiver a card which would give me various discounts in most restaurants, which was amazing. Stratford is naturally expensing considering that it is a tourist are but the perks I received from the hotel made it manageable.

The nightlife in Stratford-Upon-Avon was really slow, because Stratford is mostly made up of elderly folk and tourists. So for a good night out we would go to a pub for a couple of drinks and then to a club then afterwards we would make our way to the local strip club which played excellent music, the only reason we would even go there and also because they were open till the wee hours of the morning.

No, they were not many opportunities to get involved in outside work. Purely for the fact that we spent most of our time at the hotel working. However a couple of colleagues participated in the Stratford marathon. During the summer, if you were lucky to get a day off there was a River concert to attend that was held over a weekend.