Vantaggi
I was so excited to be gaining experience at my first travel industry job after graduating with honours from a two year program. My goal prior to enrolling in the course was to work in corporate travel- so gaining employment here was a big win for me. I got along well with my coworkers. Sometimes we would grab drinks which was nice. A lot of the time we had to bring our laptops and continue working though. We went to Palm Springs for a weekend which was cool until we found out that my coworker and I would be sharing a double sized bed which had not been disclosed. I thought that was pretty distasteful for any company- let alone a travel management company :) but hey, other than that it was a fun trip I guess. Great career opportunities here, there’s a new job opening every day and you can even do like 3-5 people’s jobs at the same time so you’ll get so much experience! :)))
Svantaggi
We were consistently locked to our keyboards. Operations team are robots. I was paid salary 8:30-5, $32 000 a year as the most junior employee. My raise kicked in the week I left the company, after my entire soul had been sucked out of me and I was so done that no amount of money could have made me stay. I had no health benefits. I was paying $25 a day for parking out of my own pocket. I was making more money at the retail job I had been working previously. I took a pay cut to work here and it was a huge mistake. I was eager to help and to learn and do my absolute best for my clients and the company and I was taken advantage of. At the time that I took on my own portfolio, the clients that were given to me were the highest performing clients for some reason. I took on the challenge with no change in pay as it was framed as a “great opportunity” for me as a junior employee. Everything was about the “experience” while I was having a h3// of a time. I tried my best and had great performance and was then called entitled for thinking I deserved a pay raise. The combination of feeling unappreciated and the immense workload crushed me and burnt me out within 8 months. I was devastated and I still don’t know if I will ever return to the travel industry after the experience I had with this company. With the size of my portfolio at the time, I was working late (hours late, I’m talking sometimes until midnight). I was working on weekends, I was waking up at 5 in the morning to try and get ahead and nothing worked. I was keeping my clients happy by staying on top of things but my mental health was deteriorating. If I managed to unbury myself then there was always someone else who was drowning that needed a hand and I can never say no when people need my help. Its an entirely different company from when I was there last year so doesn’t look like I was the issue after all. All of the people I knew from there minus the core 5 have all moved on and everyone else is new.