Cox and
Kings is
a travel company that traces its history to 1758, when Richard Cox was
appointed as the regimental agent to the Foot Guards. It is now the longest
established travel company with its headquarters in India. It is the leading
holidays and education travel group with operations in 23 countries across four
continents. In India Cox and Kings has presence in 149 cities. Their core
activities is now the sale of packaged holidays for leisure travel, with a
particular focus on cultural and adventure tourism. Historically, Cox and Kings
has been army agents, travel agents, printer & publisher, news agents,
cargo agents, ship-owner, bankers, insurance agents, and into dealing of
several travel related activities. They are a premium brand in corporate
travel, education and activity travel, meetings, incentives, conferencing,
exhibitions, (MICE), trade fairs, visa processing and foreign exchange.
My
experience
Getting to Intern in a company such as Cox &
Kings, which is globally renowned is really a prestigious thing for a student
like me/us. It is fairly a huge company where different work agendas has been
divided into different sections out of which MICE division is one. My
internship was circled into only this one division (MICE) which on the outside
may sound like a small section but when you actually see the work on the inside
it is a tremendous work going on in this department itself. MICE has again
different teams working together as one and they are; Sales, Operations, Visa
and Airlines. The team I got to work with was the Sales Team and the things
that I learned from working with them comes in a lot of different areas,
namely:
1. I got to renew my MS
Office skills.
2. Built up on my personal
traits like being patient with clients, remaining calm and composed in a
difficult situation, on handling certain unfavourable circumstances, handling
client meetings on calls, also how to not undersell or oversell your brand.
3. Corporate work process in
an Organization.
4. Conducting outdoor meetings
with clients.
5. Preparing itinerary for
the clients.
6. Making and sending invites
to the clients on special events.
7. Maintaining clients for a
long term.
8. Selling the products by
turning from Why’s to Wow’s.
9. An impressive PPT always a
must for selling of the products in a travel company, and
10. A little bit in managing
events.
Apart from the points that are given above I also
learnt that Sales in the MICE division of a Travel Company is all about the
clients/customers. Whatever they do or say should attract the clients and make
them happy. In short, it’s all about customer satisfaction. Also a lot of
probing is being done in sales. Given the fact that there are lots of other
brands competing in the market out there, what we are giving them should be exceptionally
good and different and that should be the reason for them to like and choose
our brand. Also finding out why and in what ways are we lacking that we aren’t
able to reach out to them is again another vital aspect that is acquired in my
learning venture. Lastly, I would like to add that a team needs to work
together as one in spirit in order to run the organization smoothly and
soundly. That is only when goals are actually achieved not only just as an
employee yourself alone but an organization as a whole.
In the whole process of my internship from the
beginning till the end, there was only one challenge that I faced. And that is,
modulating your character and behaviour and language according to the kinds of
clients that we dealt with. Well, that
makes it three.
Overall, it gave me immense pleasure to have got a
chance to work with them. The people that I worked with from the Sr. General
Manager to the Executives have all been very kind and supportive and it was a very
encouraging and an inspiring 3 months for me. The time management was good,
employees were friendly to assist with anything and even open to suggestions,
and although it was a corporate company the manners and etiquette and even the clothing
were very casual so there was a little pressure suspended because of that. All in all, it was a tremendously amazing
experience for me and I am more than eager to put my experiences and learnings
out there for the betterment and development of any which company I choose to
work with in the future.
-Wonchibeni
Lotha
Student
INLEAD
INBM, July
2015
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