Week One: "The hardest part is wanting to go on every trip that you book!"

Today I started my first day as an intern with Annie's Escapes, a small custom travel planning business. I knew I'd hit a gold mine when I first discovered the internship opportunity and looked through her website, full of delicious travel stories and photos. My instincts were right on the money when we interviewed and she told me what she was looking for in an intern: someone "excellent at social media," someone "good at organizing," and someone "who really wanted to learn anything and everything about the business."  Hi, my name is Alissa.

I learned so many things just during the debriefing:

• Most small travel agents are a part of a "Host Organization." This is because there is power in numbers. Being a part of a larger travel organization gets the agent better rates for their clients on everything from cruises, accommodations, and excursions -- while still allowing the agent to operate their business on their terms and having the small business feel.                                          
• Travel agents dont want to take care of your flights. Well, they want to help you, but they dont make any commissions from airlines--So in order to avoid a booking fee from your travel agent, book your flights on your own. 

 My first task this morning was to go through her website and read all her information and blogs in order to get more acquainted with her style. Well lordy, reading about all her client's trips to Montreal, Italy, Iceland, and Vancouver- did that ever leave me with an inflamed wanderlust!

She said the hardest part of the job is wanting to go on every trip that you book      .....Understood!


After doing that, I helped link the Annie's Escapes facebook and website, and then explained some awesome html things she can do with her facebook fan page. One of the projects during this internship will be creating content for her website, creating a "landing page" for her facebook fans, and managing the social media aspects. Good times!

As a travel business, she gets tons and tons of travel magazines. What blows me away, is that she reads them ALL! As she's going through them, she dog marks the interesting articles to go through later, rip out, and put into a file folder for that destination/company/country for later inspiration. Isn't that such a great idea?  Another one of my jobs this summer will be to go through those magazines and organize those articles. I will also be able to pick out some things from the magazines that I find interesting and blog about them on her website.

Some more practical "travel agenty" things I did today included calling a hotel to ask about shipping luggage, researching restaurant options for a group tour in Vancouver, and proofreading a travel package advertisement.


Week one, day one and I am really excited for this internship. 
 Sure I dont get credit or get paid, but come on, its a learning opportunity that will last a lifetime, not to mention a great resume addition and opportunity for hands on learning!!!  

Have any questions about the travel industry? (maybe I can ask!)
Have you ever had an awesome opportunity that you knew would benefit you in the long run? Did it?