It’s an exciting time as many of you people on placement break the half way stage. Our Guest Bloggers at TUI UK update us with their experiences so far…

“As this is our first blog of the year, let us start by wishing you all a Happy New Year.

It’s certainly been a hectic start to the year for staff at TUI as we saw how the severe snow had such an impact on sales and our customers. The trading team have been working hard as January is their busiest month. The product team have completed strategic planning and research for the summer 2012 programme. And there is never a dull day in the cruise department – with new itineraries to plan for the April edition brochure and trading targets to meet.

As mentioned in the previous blog, the placement students took a trip to Southampton to visit the Thomson Dream before it left for its transatlantic journey to the Caribbean. We had a tour around the newest ship to the Thomson fleet and got treated to lunch and cocktails – it was a really good day! We tried to stay on board and head to the Caribbean but unfortunately we just had to make do with Southampton! For many of us, it was our first time on a cruise liner and a few of us are already planning future cruise holidays.

Two of the placement students, Jac and Dec, had a fantastic opportunity to go to Aswan in Egypt with the chance to experience one of our products in the form of a Nile Cruise. While on board they had the chance to speak to customers and get feedback from the rep. It was an eye opener for them, to see how things could be improved as well as seeing things that are being done well. While on the trip they had the opportunity to visit the famous Abu Simbel temples and haggle in the markets of Luxor all in the space of 3 days!

Last weekend all of the placement students took part in the National Back to the Floor day where over 200 head office staff had the chance to return to retail and experience customer enquiries and bookings first-hand. We all returned to our home towns and really valued the experience as it reminded us how excited customers get about booking their holidays and the how important our roles are in contributing to their experience.

As you may all be aware, we are currently in the process of recruiting for next year’s placement students. We’ve helped out on the Assessment Days by running an ice-breaker exercise. It’s unbelievable how time flies as this time last year we were doing the same exercises and it only feels like yesterday! We would just like to wish all applicants good luck and say congratulations to those who have already secured a position – we know you’ll have a great year!

Coming up we’ve got more things to look forward to. We will soon be having our second commercial update (details of which are found in the first blog). Many of us are taking advantage of the great travel opportunities we have here and some of us are spending time in different departments to experience other sides of the business.”

You can find out more from TUI UK, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at TUI UK?