Study Travel Magazine - July 2011

This article, by Alex Wolfson at Cactus, describes a typical week in the life of a language travel consultant: “Monday: The week starts afresh to hopefully lots of new bookings taken over the weekend and hopefully no phone messages from clients who have arrived at their course destination over the weekend and are unable to find their transfer/host family street/the language school! June/July is our busiest season so at this time of year Monday is mostly taken up with processing new orders, collecting information on host family accommodation etc for existing ones and following up new enquiries. Monday is always the busiest day for any kind of client activity (new bookings, enquiries, chasing information) so today I’m at my desk drinking lots of tea.

Tuesday: This is usually my “School Groups day”. We have a few teenage groups accompanied by their school teachers going on language trips in July, though most go in October or at Easter. Tuesday is my day to focus on them. I could be preparing information packs, putting together a proposal, negotiating with a group leader on price, discussing a proposal with one of our partner schools. Last Tuesday I was visiting a potential school group client close to Southampton armed with sample quotes, Powerpoint presentation and dressed in a sharp suit in contrast to our usual Cactus dress-down style! That’s the advantage of being an online company – as clients don’t tend to come to our office, we can wear what we like!

Wednesday: Today a colleague in our marketing department approaches me for advice about where she might go abroad to take a Spanish course at one of our partner schools. She wants to go somewhere in September where there will be nice weather, a beach and a great school. I recommend our partners in Nerja, Malaga, Denia or Valencia. One of the main perks we get as employees of Cactus, whether we work in sales, marketing, finance or on our UK courses is that we can take a week’s language course at any of our partner schools in Cactus! This is great for keeping us in touch with language learning, and in keeping up our product knowledge.

Thursday: It’s getting to the end of the week so I run a report to check all the clients leaving to start their courses at the weekend have the information they need. I also take time to look at what destinations to put on our flash banners on our website. I take a look through what destinations have sold well in the past at this time of year and contact our partner schools in these destinations to see if we can get a special promotion or offer for our clients.

Friday: Manic day as we round off the week and send out any unsent information, have a team meeting, field calls from clients who have decided they want to start a course on Monday! With accommodation! I finalise my colleague’s course and follow up on School Groups proposals. An impromptu meeting with the Product Manager for our UK courses to discuss how we can cross market our courses takes me almost to the end of the day, so I run a final departure report, field one more call and dash off to the Wagon and Horses for a pint of cider, a laugh and a chat with my fantastic colleagues.”