For the majority of the time, TUI brands deliver above and beyond this and, in my experience, the products of the Specialist & Activity Sector are second to none. However, there are the odd occasions where natural disasters, supplier issues or even our own logistical inaccuracies mean we don’t deliver quite the exceptional service we should.

One example of this become apparent to me over the New Year break. I was lucky enough to go skiing with some friends who own a chalet out in La Plagne; it was incredible! Such a beautiful location and, as it was my first time, I was introduced to the many and varied delights of skiing. I’ll definitely be going back!

Just a couple of hours’ ski away was the resort of Les Arcs, where some of my other friends were also holidaying with Crystal Ski. They too were loving the area and making the most of the beautiful conditions, one on a snowboard and one on skis. Crystal even set up a mountain-side meal for them one evening complete with a night-time ski back to their hotel, so they were having a fantastic time.

However, when the time came for them to leave, my friends encountered a problem attributable apparently to a logistical error at Crystal; their coach to the airport was booked 2 hours later than their flight was due to depart. This meant an entire coach load of people did not make it to the airport in time and thus the plane was delayed whilst waiting for them.

Crystal dealt with the situation and ensured my friends got home, but due to this error, my friend’s opinion of the company changed. He felt let down by them and considered their oversight an indicator that Crystal had not fully considered his personal experience.

Interestingly (and the key point of my blog), my friend, knowing I work for TUI and that Crystal is a TUI brand, decided to text his grievances to me, starting with the words “TUI Fail”.

Yes, “TUI Fail”. Not “Crystal Fail”, “TUI Fail”. He knows the connection of the companies and links me with TUI and thus attributed this issue to TUI and, more specifically, me.

The problem clearly wasn’t my fault. Nor was it likely to be the fault of one person at the company concerned. But suddenly, the negative experience my friend had encountered had changed his view of Crystal, of TUI and therefore, of me.

I’m extremely proud of my job and enjoy it immensely so it’s sad for me to find that people’s perception of what I do can be tarnished by something realistically so small. But it does highlight a key lesson; that reputation is key and that it affects us all.

So what can we do? Well, I am in no doubt that Crystal will provide the service to my friend that he deserves as their customer and, though I won’t profess to know what their procedures are or what my friend has consequently experienced, no doubt a process is in place. What is essential, therefore, is that we all adhere to our processes, delivering the best service possible at all time and recognising that, though mistakes or errors will occur, it is how we deal with them that counts. After all, it affects us all.

To illustrate this error in an abstract manner, and to give you something to chuckle at as a gift for the New Year, here’s a photo of me falling over on our ski trip:

The mistakes of one can affect us all....

The TUI grad scheme opens up a whole world of opportunities

TUI Travel have announced they have now opened applications for the TUI Travel Specialist & Activity Sector Graduate Scheme (which I’m currently on!).

You can apply now at the link below:

• Apply now for TUI Travel Specialist & Activity Sector Graduate Scheme

Since joining the grad scheme, I’ve had some amazing experiences, from learning to fly a plane to dining with the Sector MD and creating a full blown proposal for a new brand ambassador scheme and experience advocacy programme for a TUI brand.

You can find out more about what me and the other grads get up to in our TUI Travel Specialist & Activity Sector Graduates blog.

You can apply for the scheme whether you’re still at uni or even if, like me, you’ve been in work for a couple of years. It’s a huge opportunity so I’d recommend anyone to have a go and get your applications in.

Good luck!

Managing our online profile is more important than ever

In an interesting, yet bizarre, turn of events, my online profiles are today experiencing a spike in traffic…

And the reason for this spike? One person mentioned they had Googled me and found it interesting.

One person looked, so many more people in my network wanted to look; they trusted their friend’s recommendation that something was interesting and sought more information because they thought it would interest them too.

It’s a very basic yet very prevalent part of online marketing and is indeed relevant for both brand positioning and our own personal profiling.

As a brand or an individual, we want to know that the information people come across about us is positive and helping to develop our brand personality. We want to ensure that information related to us is relevant, worthwhile and of value to our audience. We want people to want to share it.

So how can we achieve this?

There’s really no hard answer as any answer is entirely brand, audience and context specific. But in essence, it comes down to managing our online presence.

So whilst others fret over the new privacy settings of their favourite networks, stop and think; do I want to hide my information, or do I want to better manage my profile by checking the way I handle myself (or my brand) online and ensure, when people do search for us, they get the impression we want them to?

You never know who’s Googling you and who they’re sharing that information with, so make sure you give them something worth sharing.

I believe it can. And here’s how:

Boosting the CV with LinkedIn

A CV is a great thing. It’s a summary off our experience and a great way to showcase what we can do.

But that’s all it is. A brief showcase of our most recent experience presented in a very static way.

The benefit that LinkedIn has for the job seeker, and the employer, is that it is dynamic. Our LinkedIn profiles grow and develop as we do, so long as we use them well, and allow us to show our potential employers our skills, interests and recommendations as well as our previous employment.

So, how do we get the most out of LinkedIn?

Profiles

The first thing is a full and complete profile. Unlike Facebook, this is a place to capture your business self and showcase your talents. Be sure to include all relevant employment and give full descriptions of tasks, projects and responsibilities.

Recommendations

Recommendations on LinkedIn are references for your work, associated to your job. They’re a great way of showing not only how your CV referees rate you but also what your colleagues and clients thought of you in that position. They give a lot more insight than your CV could.

Don’t be afraid to ask for recommendations – they’re a great record of your value and are more easily available to potential employers than references.

The best way to get a recommendation (aside from doing well in your job) is to recommend other people. Try to get recommendations from fromof the relevant people you work with – whether you’re planning to leave or not.

Allowing potential employers to see what people think of you can really help you stand out.

Groups and Interaction

Just as you “like” Pages on Facebook, you can join groups on LinkedIn.

These groups help you in two main ways, the first being to provide you with a forum to discuss matters relevant to you and the second being to enable you to showcase your expertise and network with like minded professionals.

You should join and interact in groups which are relevant to the line of work you are in or looking to move into. Showing you are aware of current isses and generally interested in the industry will help you stand out from other candidates and also give you something to talk about in your interview.

The Benefits of Blogging

Just as interacting in groups on LinkedIn will show your interests, blogging too provides a medium through which to show your expertise, share your thoughts and communicate your personality and passion.

And your blog doesn’t need to take a lot of time; don’t feel you need to labour over it to constantly provide the most in depth analysis and revolutionary thought. Instead, see it as a way of improving your own understanding of topics whilst showing that you genuinely are interested in whatever topic (relevant to your line of work) you cover.

You can then add the URL of your blog to your CV, giving your application an extra dimension that others might not have.

Blogs give you great exposure too. You never know; your blog may br spotted by people in the industry you seek to progress in before you even send your CV which would put you in a great position before the application process even starts!

Follow and comment on the blogs of others

Following other people’s blogs and commenting on them is another way to get benefit from blogs. Try to identify the influential people in your sector and listen to what they have to say. Learn from them and provide your insight in return. Being aware of current issues and understanding them from an insiders point of view will really help you stand out.

The importance of the internet

Blogging is also a great way of showing you understand the importance of the internet in today’s business world.

No matter the sector, businesses everywhere are using or seeing the need to use the likes of social media to engage their audience and achieve their goals. By demonstrating your online prowess, you’ll be identified as someone who knows what they’re doing and who can help the company progress in the online sphere.

Networking through Twitter

Twitter is a micro blogging platform where users share updates and links and conduct conversations in 140 character messages (see my guide to Twitter for beginners to learn more).

Through Twitter, you can follow influential and interesting people in your sector. This will provide you opportunities to see what they think about things and follow the links they share.

Interacting with those people in an intelligent manner will also get you noticed and help you increase your knowledge. Retweet the tweets you find interesting and reply from time to time; that way, the person you’re following gets to learn more about you too.

Your Twitter feed can also link to your blog so every time you upload a new post, your followers will be aware, once again increasing your exposure in your industry and building up your networks.

It’s not all about business cards these days you know!

Manage your personal networks

Using social media in a job search also means managing the networks you wouldn’t class as business.

For example, if you’re anything like me your Facebook profile is full of photos of you and your friends and you wall is covered with interactions with those friends that may not portray you as the professional you want to be seen as.

Having those kinds of profiles, whether on Facebook, Google Plus or anywhere else is fine. Just be aware that any potential employer can find those pages, so spend a bit of time checking your privacy settings and seeing what other people can see. It takes a bit of time but it’s well worth the effort to ensure the perception potential employers have of you is shaped only by the things you want it to be.

Yesterday, I listened to the news in horror as the story of a young boy killed in a hit and run was bumped back in the headline order to make way for the BIG story of the day: Blackberry users couldn’t get on the internet.

I guess it might be me… As a Samsung user I’ve never been faced with the monumental tragedy of not being able to update my Facebook status. I mean, god forbid a moment should ever arise where I can’t share a link to my favourite cat-playing-the-piano video as soon as it comes to my attention. May there never be a day where I cannot tell the world my deepest, most inner thoughts in 140 characters.

In an interview on Radio 1, one devastated RIM customer shared his emotional turmoil; he was unable to BBM his 8 month pregnant wife. What was he supposed to do?

Here’s a thought (and bear with me on this one). What if you CALLED your wife? You know, like the old days. What if you saved your status update for later? What if you checked your emails on a computer rather than a phone? What if we got some perspective, learned to live without phones for the day and allowed the death of that little boy the coverage it deserves?

Because some things are more important than BBM.

The beach I sat on was one of Sharm El Sheikh’s finest and I was enjoying the beauty of Egypt thanks to my tour operator, and one of TUI’s largest mainstream brands, Thomson.

Camels on a Sharm El Sheikh beach

Obviously, my journey with TUI will see me undertake six placements in the Specialist and Activity Sector – but experiencing the customer’s point of view on a mainstream holiday still gave me a fantastic insight into the ethos of the company as a whole.

From the moment I booked my holiday with Thomson, I was delighted with the level of customer service and, in particular, personalisation that they offered me. As a consumer, I like nothing better than to feel the service or product has been tailored to me and it certainly felt that way with Thomson. From the personalised ‘My Thomson’ webpage, which gave me updates on weather, photos of my resort and things to do in the area, to the personalised ticket and information booklet which arrived weeks before departure and right down to the personalised welcome letter on arrival at the hotel, everything felt like it was for me. It’s a fantastic way of serving people and something which really makes me feel proud to be part of the company. It’s the kind of service which stands Thomson (and TUI) apart and that experience is something which will stay with me throughout my career with them.

And it didn’t stop there! Personalisation played a huge part in making my holiday special but so did the spectacular surroundings of the beautiful Iberotel Palace Hotel.

The beautiful Iberotel Palace, Sharm El Sheikh

I’d expected a high standard from the resort. It was marked up as one of Thomson’s Premium offerings, which meant guests consistently rated it at over 90% satisfaction in all criteria, plus I’d taken a look on holiday forum Trip Advisor just to be sure, and I wasn’t disappointed! Recommendations and validation from sources before the travel company play a key factor in my choices and I believe the Premium mark from Thomson goes a long way to providing that for me.

Even the journey to the resort was fantastic and I marvelled at the mood lighting provided on board our Airbus A320. It sounds like a small thing but the changes in lighting made for some appropriate changes in mood and really relaxed me and my fellow passengers. I’d be really interested to fly a long haul flight in one of TUI’s Dreamliners to see how the lighting effects affect jet lag…

A bit of fun with a Thomson plane

From well before departure right up to arriving back in the UK, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of travelling with Thomson and am even more excited about my new job thanks to the insight it gave me into how the company’s ethos translates into real life experiences for its customers.

Not to be seen as a complete suck up though, I will point out one thing I was a little less happy with on my Sharm El Sheikh holiday: the excursions. As I learned at my welcome meeting and through the literature provided, Thomson offer various excursions to help you make the most of your time in the resort and beyond. But, and this is in spite of the ten reasons they give to book with them, I believe I found better value for money in a local excursion operator.

To give an example of this, Thomson offered a day trip to Cairo for £160 per person. I was able to get, for myself and my boyfriend, a total price of £130 each for a day trip to Cairo, a jeep safari and snorkelling day trip and a quad biking adventure – quite the saving!

And, again in spite of the ten reasons Thomson give to book with them, I don’t feel I missed out by not booking with them. I felt extremely safe and well looked after with the local company and even spotted Thomson customers flying on the exact same flight as us and at the same attractions as us in Cairo! Our guides were always extremely well qualified too, with our Cairo guide just coming to the end of her PhD in Egyptology and Archaeology and about to become a lecturer at Cairo University.

Exploring Egypt

I guess the point I’m making here is that, for all of the fantastic offerings Thomson provided to me, there are areas they can work on to improve. I hope I can provide my insight and add value to all of my placements by being able to maintain a customer-centric approach and understand how we can continue to provide the highest standards of service to our customers.

(If anyone from TUI does want to send me on an all expenses paid trip to a luxury resort so I can do some more of this ‘research’, I wouldn’t be adverse to the idea… )

PR News | How to Brief an Infographic Designer.

Of course, this predominantly means getting links from reputable and relevant sources through quality content and PR. But more and more, link building is also about social validation.

I explore this further in my latest contribution to Ben Norman’s SEO blog. Take a look at the full article now.

PR News | Why PR Pros Need to Use Infographics.

But whilst an understanding of the technicalities of mobile SEO is important, it’s not as important as an understanding of the mobile user and ensuring we meet the needs of an increasingly savvy audience.

I explore the importance of user centred thought in mobile SEO in my latest feature for Ben Norman. Take a look at the full article now at Ben Norman | Considering the User in Mobile SEO.