A Day in the life:
Hello, I am a Royal Roads University student completing my internship at the Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites in Vancouver. The Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites is located in the West End of Vancouver. The West End consists of many, many different varieties of restaurants and English Bay, one of Vancouver’s beaches! The Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites consists of 269 rooms in a 35 floor tower. The base of the hotel is a community mall which has everything I need, a grocery store and a wine store! http://www.denmanplacewines.com/
I am lucky enough to have seized the opportunity to live at this Coast Hotels property while completing my internship. I am spending these 12 weeks in a one bedroom suite on the 20th floor. This makes my commute to work every day just a quick elevator ride!!
The Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites is located in the West End of Vancouver, right beside English Bay and Stanley Park. I am living at the beach for my internship!
730am: Alarm goes off.
7:40am: Get out of bed, walk into my living area and turn my laptop on to check my @coasthotels email. While the computers turning on, I enter the kitchen to make some breakfast. Breakfast is ready just in time to check the email and the daily sales report. I specially look over the occupancy for the past day, compared to month to date and then compared to budget. I also look at how the other departments are doing for budget and month to date.
8:00am: Get ready for the work day
8:27am: Leave for work
8:30am: Arrive in the Sales and Catering department.
The Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites is currently in the second phase of their $9 million renovations. This makes sales so much more exciting. The hotel has new TVs, furniture and linens in the guest rooms. Showing off these new and improved guest rooms to prospective clients is something that makes everyone feel very proud.
I also had the opportunity to work with a professional photographer to take new pictures of the guest rooms and views from the top floor that will be featured on the Coast Hotels website and a variety of brochures.
The gorgeous view of Coal Harbour:
The newest corporate sales manager has yet to start his new role in the hotel (previously working as a Duty Manager on the front desk) so in the mean time I have taken over his office!
I check in with the Director of Sales to double-check my duties for the day.
9am-11am: Compiling Summer Discount Flyers and making calls to a variety of businesses to send these flyers to.
11am-Noon: Surprise! Michelle, a sales manager from Coast Coal Harbour brings a client over for a site visit to our property because Coast Coal Harbour is too small to accommodate the requirements of the client. Great teamwork between the two properties! Winning Together is an important Coast Hotels value.
I quickly rush down to the front desk, grab a key card for couple of rooms and take the elevator to the 19th floor to turn the lights on and double/triple check the show rooms. The client then arrives and we show him the different guest rooms we have to offer.
Examples:
A Comfort Room:
One Bedroom Suite:
After viewing the guest rooms, we go back down to the Conference level and explain and show the client a variety of options for the different spaces in the conference rooms. The client is considering hosting a large convention in the Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites (CPHS) and therefore needs a large room for convention space. CPHS is lucky enough to have Denman Cinema’s as a part of their building
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Denman-Cinema/185674881464146?sk=wall
After showing all the amenities (pool, fitness centre, restaurant and pub) to the client, we establish that our sales team will create a proposal to offer to the client.
Noon-1pm: Lunch time! I head back up to my room to relax and enjoy lunch. Followed by a walk along the beach and grabbing a Starbucks coffee to power through the afternoon.
Depending on which department I am in, lunch varies. The Brasserie Bistro is a popular lunch spot for the leadership teams. Great food and great service!!
http://twitter.com/#!/BrasserieBistro
1pm – 430pm: Back to the sales office! Depending on how the day is going, I go through the variety of offices and offer my help to any of the sales managers. The afternoon can consist of prospecting phone calls to possible future clients, or to stuffing catering packages.
As a thank you to the Vancouver Police Department for their bravery during the Vancouver 2011 Riots, I created gift baskets from Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites:
430-8pm: Change out of business attire and into shorts and a t-shirt. Since Vancouver is close to home for me, my boyfriend is a frequent visitor. Weekday evenings we put our runners on and hit the StanleyPark seawall!
http://vancouver.ca/parks/parks/stanley/seawall.htm
The 10km walk/run/bike/rollerblade wall starts and ends right in front of the Coast Plaza, my summertime home! Afterwards, we’ll end up hungry, there are too many eateries to choose from in the West End! We’ll try something new for dinner most nights.
My internship also over lapped with the Canucks 2011 Playoff run. I was lucky enough to not be in the midst of all the riots. I am also lucky enough to have had the opportunity to walk through the streets during the clean up and see the true side of Vancouverites shine through.
8pm: time to relax, catch up on personal emails and work on some RRU homework.
930/10: watch the sunset from my 20th floor view.
11: bedtime!
And I can’t forget one of the best parts of living at the Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites…
The annual Celebration of Light fireworks! Here’s a sample of what I get to experience for 3 great nights this summer:
Sounds like a dream internship Marta!!
By: faye on August 26, 2011
at 6:11 pm