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Administrative Systems in the Travel and Tourism Industry - Activity

A reservations assistant on the telephone.

The work carried out in different travel and tourism organisations can vary considerably and the administrative tasks that need to be carried out depend on the area of travel and tourism with which you are familiar. Whilst the skills and capabilities needed to perform certain administrative tasks can discussed generally, there is no substitute for experience.

Unfortunately, as a student of travel and tourism you don't usually get the chance to see what goes on in the real world. This activity therefore uses a source of material drawn from real experience. You will be asked to read accounts of the tasks done by people working in the industry.

Image: Roles such as receptionists and reservations assistants include a great deal of telephone work. Copyright: Peter Skadberg, stock.xchng


Tasks

  1. Go to the Connexions Web site. (http://www.connexions-direct.com/index.cfm?pid=51&page=96)
  2. Download the guide to working in tourism, available as a PDF or a Word file. There's a range of tourism-related work areas, including: Tour Operators, Travel Agencies, Tourism Marketing and Holiday Centres.
  3. Read the information there about the tasks required in different jobs within the industry. Perhaps just choose a job in an area that you'd like to move into when you've completed your studies.
  4. The range of jobs includes: reservations assistants, overseas reps, travel agency consultant, business travel consultant, tourist information assistant, theme park assistant and many more.
  5. For the jobs that interest you, make a list of the administrative tasks that the job involves. A list of possible tasks is given below:
    • Answering telephones
    • Dealing with the public face-to-face
    • Processing payments
    • Handing out and collecting questionnaires
    • Sending tickets through the postal system
    • Processing documents
    • Filing information
    • Delivering messages
  6. Use a table in a Word document to record each task. Alongside each of these, make a note of the possible consequences that could occur from poor performance of the administrative task.
  7. In a final column of the table say what action could be taken to ensure that this problem does not occur. For example, training and development, discipline, better administration system and so on.