BA495A Final Presentation

Hi, my name is bailey.

Hey and I'm going to be presenting on my internship

with the element Orlando International Drive, which is managed and

operated by Peachtree Hotel Group.

Oh, The hospitality industry is a very big industry in

Orlando Florida, with three major theme parks, more than 450

hotels in over 300 restaurants in the city.

Orlando has become a hotspot for tourism and travel on

an international level.

World renowned hospitality educational programs such as Rosen at U.

C. F.

And the Disney College program continued to provide the city

with the best hospitality professionals.

The city has to offer.

Peachtree Hotel Group is a fully integrated real estate investment

platform with a focus on hospitality.

This firm finances, owns, operates, manages and develops full select

limited service and extended stay hotel assets throughout the United

States, With 320 plus hotels and real estate assets in

its portfolio and five plus billion in total capitalization of

real estate assets.

Peachtree proves to be a major competitor in the hospitality

industry. They currently have five holdings in the Orlando area

and recently opened three properties during the COVID-19 pandemic, A

little bit about the property that I was interning for.

The element Orlando on International Drive.

It's opened by the peach tree in june of 2020

with a total of 165 bedrooms and it's located in

the heart of Orlando, across from Icon park and the

Orlando Eye.

Although they did open in the middle of the pandemic,

they were able to maintain a strong presence at 30

occupancy and 50 on weekends during the drop in travel

by maintaining this presence during the pandemic, they outlasted other

properties and have held a stronger occupancy and A.

D. R, which is average daily rate to those outside

of the industry.

As travel travel has begun to pick up in recent

months. The element by Westin brand believes that travelers deserve

more than a place to stay.

They need a place to thrive where they can start

everyday fresh focused and feeling alive.

Whether stopping by a few days or settling in for

a few weeks.

Time away from home shouldn't mean time away from life.

Yeah. Yeah the internship project that I developed with the

Element General manager, Crystal Bonaparte was to create a training

program for the guest services team in an effort to

enhance their property training as they were an opening property

with little supplemental material in order to do so.

In addition to my existing knowledge and experience, I was

provided access to the property management system, Marriott Global Source

as well as several business and hospitality journals.

The project that I decided to do um as the

training program encompassed um Check in and check out guide,

which is based on the brand standard audit basically was

meant to be um an introduction to the agents on

how they check in a guest and how they check

out a guest.

Um It's meant to be at a glance so that

they can have that extra assistance as they do the

process. I also created a daily checklist, which is the

items that they are expected to complete daily.

Um It's in detail and it's everything that they are

expected to complete while they are on shift.

Um There was also one that I created for the

supervisors which is going to be a little bit more

in detail on the supervisory role.

I created a performance review sheet.

Um This was meant to be used when reviewing with

an agent on their performance.

The way that we wanted to set it up was

more um instead of being more structural, we wanted it

to be goal oriented so that they don't feel like

they're being criticized but rather they feel motivated to continue

growing and getting better.

I also created standard operating procedure forms for the property.

These are meant to be just in depth on individual

policies and procedures that the property has.

um so I was able to create about 10 of

these for the property.

Um this is the the procedures that a that the

property requested and be that I thought were very important

based on my experience and knowledge in the industry.

I also created a training checklist um based on a

five day training period.

I was able to break down the different levels of

training and what a person should learn um for each

day of their training.

Finally, I created a comprehensive training manual which is to

go over everything that a guest service agent should know.

Um It is very long and very detailed um but

it's also just supplemental material that they can refer back

to in any circumstance they have.

Yeah, sure, yeah, as you can see here these are

some of the deliverables I was able to present to

the property.

Um The first one here was the training checklist which

breaks down the training by five days.

The next one here in the middle um is a

standard operating procedure for cash handling.

Um This is just going into detail about that individual

procedure and in the top corner you'll see the check

in guide which is basically just all of the points

that you need to hit in a check in for

at a glance knowledge.

Mhm. Yeah, treat.

Is this something that I will do in the future?

So I do see my future in hospitality.

Um I don't necessarily know if it's in the training

area or front desk specifically.

I have come to find that I like doing accounting

and working with group contacts um doing things that are

more structured as opposed to having a job that can

change on the daily guest services really for the person

that um like something new every day and I find

myself to be very type a and I like to

do things a certain way and have it.

Um I'll go according to plan so they kind of

like the financial side of things um that's kind of

where I want to hear the rest of my um

experience towards.

Um I do believe that this project will affect my

career aspirations and future studies.

Um I kind of found my niche where I would

like to be.

Um but also I was able to experience more of

like how to create the training program and how to

work with different people in the industry.

I feel like I've got a lot of knowledge from

it and it's something that I can add to my

resume to kind of boost myself in the future.

Um I don't know that there's anything that I would

have done differently.

Um something that I would have liked to experience is

the outside of COVID-19 the personal relationships that you would

have developed, being able to be on property and see

the progress.

I was able to get a lot of feedback from

the property and the management team and we did schedule

some virtual sessions where I was able to see them

working with the material and get their feedback on how

it worked for them, which was really lovely.

Um If covid 19 wasn't an issue, I would have

liked to be more involved in that process and seeing

how it worked, what their feedback was.

Um and if there's anything that they would have like

different um so that I could tailor it to them

um I am very glad that I met Crystal who

was my mentor in this session.

Um She was very helpful in giving me additional resources

um and also just developing me into a better leader,

She gave me a lot of information that I wouldn't

have gotten normally and I feel like she invested in

me more than she would um more than anybody would

be expected to in this project.

Um She also, it was able to get me a

job when I moved to Orlando, she referred me to

one of her colleagues and I was able to get

a position at the other element and the loft in

Orlando on universal boulevard.

Um so it was a really cool experience and a

really great connection to make.

Yeah, as far as business skills that I learned, um

I really appreciated having the time to go through all

of my classes and see how they applied to this

um internship I wrote in my journal is a little

bit about how I was able to translate that, but

I feel like I was able to really capture a

lot of the information that I learned in college and

apply that towards this internship.

Um I definitely learned a little bit about myself and

how to work with the team, be a leader of

a team.

Um it was very difficult with covid having to do

everything virtually and schedule meetings, um but also the teamwork

aspect was very hard, um just because you're not face

to face and the communication could be difficult.

So while I was able to get ahold of my

mentor sometimes, I wasn't always able to get a hold

of the team and it would have been nice to

have that level of communication, but I feel like I

enhanced my business and social skills by being able to

still operate in that changing environment.

Yeah. Um the differences between the academic environment and application

of skills, um I do believe that there is a

difference. Um everything you learn it better when you're in

the process, so being able to actually do the things

that we've learned um really lets it resonate with me.

Um It's also something that's like, easily transferrable, whereas something

that I learned in school may not be transferrable in

a job perspective because I know it, but there's no

um application of it, whereas here I was able to

actually take those skills and show something forward.

Um So it's something I'm able to add with my

portfolio and move forward with.

Um overall I'm very happy with how things turned out.

Um I made several really great connections in the industry

and was able to provide them something useful that they

will be able to move forward with and grow with.

Um So I'm very excited to be able to have

experienced this and I think it was a really wonderful

project. Um If anybody was curious about the resources that

I used while in this internship, here's a few of

them, um some of them do require, like uh logins

um from Marriott or the H L O.

U I, you would need to set up your own

account. Um But they're really great resources, of course, is

that you can take to learn more about the industry.

Yeah. Thank you for listening.

BA495A Final Presentation

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