Автор работы: Пользователь скрыл имя, 27 Сентября 2013 в 05:55, шпаргалка
London
The capital city of England and the United Kingdom lies on the River Thames, which winds through the city. Its many bridges are a famous sight. The oldest is London Bridge, originally made of wood but rebuilt in stone in 1217. The most distinctive is Tower Bridge, which was designated to blend in with the nearby Tower of London.
3. Tourism and Hospitality. Hotel: Amenities and Facilities
Seaside and Beach
In the 18th century British people started going to the seaside for pleasure and for their health. Seaside towns such as Brighton, Lyme Regis and Scarborough became fashionable with the upper class. Bathing in the sea became popular and bathing machines were invented for people to get changed in. Later, towns like Blackpool, Clacton-on-Sea and Margate, which were close to industrial areas or to London, developed into large seaside resorts to which workers went for a day out or for their holiday. Long piers were built stretching out to sea and soon a wide range of amusements was built on them. Promenades were built along the shore for people to walk along. Rows of beach huts and chalets (= buildings where people could get changed or sit and have tea) took the place of bathing machines, and deckchairs were for hire on the beach. There were ice cream sellers, whelk stalls (small covered stalls selling cheap seafood), stalls selling buckets and spades for children to build sandcastles, and the occasional Punch and Judy show. In the early 1900s it became popular to send seaside postcards to friends. Children bought seaside rock, a long sugary sweet with the name of the place printed through it.
Most British people like to go to the sea for a day out or for a weekend. Resorts like Blackpool are still popular, but others are run-down and rather quiet. British people now prefer to go on holiday to beach resorts in Spain, Greece or the Caribbean because the weather is more likely to be sunny and warm. About a quarter of all beaches in Britain fail standards set by the European Union because they are not clean enough or because the water quality is poor.
Americans talk of going to the ocean or the beach, rather than the seaside. Some places, especially on the East coast, have very popular beaches and people travel long distances to go there. Florida is especially popular and at spring break it is full of students. Beach activities include swimming, surfing and windsurfing, also called sailboarding. Many people go to the beach but never go into the water. They spend their time playing games like volleyball (= sending a ball back and forth over a net) and frisbee (= throwing a flat plastic disc). Other people go to the beach to get a tan and spend all their time sunbathing. Except on a very few nudist beaches, women wear bathing suits (BrE bathing costumes) or bikinis and men wear trunks or shorts. Many people worry about getting skin cancer if they get burnt by the sun and so put on sun cream or sun block to protect their skin. A day at the beach often also involves a picnic meal or, especially in the US, a barbecue (= meat cooked over an open fire).
The colonists are being colonized. Europe is being turned into one big theme park.
Tourism used to be something that well-heeled northern Europeans and North Americans did to other people. They put on brightly coloured clothes and wandered around the world as if it were a zoo, chattering away in front of the natives and scattering the local currency that they did not need to bother to understand because they could buy so much with their dollars and pounds, confident that they were watching a spectacle mounted entirely for their benefit.
Then their less affluent compatriots joined in, turning much of the coastline of Spain, Greece and Turkey into a convincing replica of the high-rise estates they had left behind.
Tourism is still regarded as a uniquely Western form of cultural imperialism, and therefore to be discouraged. However its next cultural clash isn’t going to be on the beaches of Asia or the Costas, it’s going to be back in Northern Europe, where it all sprang from in the first place.
Last year Britain had 21-million overseas visitors, up from 16 million just five years ago. The Government’s latest figures on tourism, released this week, predict another rise of 10 per cent. The number of visitors are not going to stop growing.
It used to be America that provided Britain with its largest contingent of free-spending overseas visitors. But the biggest jump in high-spending new visitors is from Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. With Heathrow full of jumbos from Korea, and even the most out-of-the-way country tea room eager to accept Japanese credit cards, Britain is having to get used to looking at mass tourism from the other end of the telescope.
It’s a development that will have far-reaching consequences for the whole of Europe. Seen from the outside, particularly from the now dominant economies of the Pacific Rim, Europe is a puzzling place, full of incomprehensible little countries, each with their own language. Its industries, from shipbuilding to computers are dying, one by one.
Europe’s future role is as a theme park the size of an entire continent, attracting millions of newly affluent visitors from the rest of the world to stare at the ancient remains of its city centers from Paris and London to Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
Even before the arrival of the mass-market Asian tourist, the impact of tourism on Britain has already been dramatic. Look at Windsor, where what was once a thriving country town has seen every shop on its high street turn into a fast-food outlet catering for the castle visitors.
The transformation of Britain by tourism is still only just beginning. Just as the first British holidaymakers who ventured to Spain in the 1950s needed constant reassurance to persuade them that abroad wasn’t absolutely terrifying, with supplies of tea bags, beer and chips, so Asian visitors to Britain still come in tightly organized tour groups, rushing around in packs, following a guide from one familiar landmark to another. The best organized are the Japanese, who publish handy guides to reassure their citizens that British taxi drivers will not be offended by a tip. The Japanese have even established a parallel universe in London, clustered around Regent Street, where you will find not just the offices of Japanese airlines, but also branches of Tokyo department stores set up especially to cater the overseas Japanese market. Delivered by bus, The Japanese can pay in yen, and have no need to attempt to speak a word of English or to worry about making fools of themselves in front of foreigners.
When the Heat is On
It’s the season of beat and dust, when the British are at the seaside or abroad, leaving their cultural heritage to tourists. The ancient monuments, palaces, and historic streets resemble a new Babylon, ringing with European, Asian and American dialects.
Last year, Britain attracted nearly 21 million visitors. The trend is steadily upward, but the picture is not unequivocally good. Tourism is the world’s biggest growth industry, and Britain is facing ever fiercer competition for tourists’ spending money.
“We have been a popular place to come to for many years”, said Isobel Coy, of the British Tourist Authority. “Now practically every country in the world is after the tourist dollar, whether it has a small coral reef or Florence. There is serious competition out there.”
“Britain has to concentrate on doing well and there is a lot of room for improvement. Two-thirds of our visitors are repeat visitors, which is good, but we must make sure we’re offering people what they want – high standards, value for money, and a warm welcome so they continue to come.”
They come for different things. The Americans and Antipodeans are interested in our common roots and architecture that is centuries older than theirs. The Russians apparently like Blackpool, the Dutch and Germans have discovered the beaches of East Anglia, the Japanese are heading for Wales, the Scandinavians for the shops in the North-east, and the Italians to the Scottish Highlands.
The North Americans come in great numbers – 3,5 million last year, an increase of 4 per cent on the previous year. The biggest increase, of 30 per cent, is in visitors from Eastern Europe.
But the big growth market for tourism, and the one all the competing resorts and destinations are aiming at, is the Far East, showing a growth of 15 per cent a year. The Japanese have been coming, and continue to come, to Britain in considerable numbers – 599,000 last year – but it is such nationalities as the Koreans, the Taiwanese, the Malaysians and the Thais who hold the future in their wallets.
Once the client has signed the booking form, you must collect the appropriate deposit payment. If the client pays in cash or by cheque, you should issue a receipt according to office procedure and then forward this payment to the tour operator concerned.
However, if the client pays with a credit card, you should make sure he or she completed and signed the credit card section on the booking form. You may find also that from time to time the operator may want the client to sign a Standard Sales Voucher instead.
Of course, it is important for the client to make out insurance. If the tour operator’s insurance is chosen, make sure the booking form is correctly completed and then add the premium to the deposit.
Should the client decide on an alternative insurance policy or perhaps no insurance at all (not to be advised), make sure this is properly noted on the booking form. Remember that if you sell our own groups’s travel insurance, you can earn up to 45 per cent commission.
Once the booking form has been signed, it should be sent to the tour operator immediately. If the option expiry date is coming up soon, it is best to telephone and make arrangements to extend the option so as to avoid any risk of the booking arriving too late. When the tour operator receives the booking form, all the details such as flight reservations or hotel rooms will be confirmed.
It is a good idea to note the date by which you should get the confirmation or the invoice back – usually two to three weeks after the booking. It is also a good idea to make a note of the date by which the client must make full payment (usually about six to ten weeks before departure). When confirmation is received you should check the details to make sure they are the same as those in your file and on the photocopy of the booking form. Finally, the confirmation should be sent to your client, highlighting the latest date for payment.
During the 1960s in Britain some resorts lost their way and the will to develop. Some, like Brighton and Bournemouth, changed direction and went for conference business and English language students. Thousands of small hotels and boarding houses became retirement homes.
However, although at that time the boom in cheap holidays at Mediterranean resorts threatened the future of British seaside resorts, since then they adapted to the new demands for shorter holidays and for off-peak holidays. Brighton invested in a marina, a conference center, and a number of new hotels.
The history of modern mass tourism began relatively slowly in the 1960s but accelerated with the advent of the wide-bodied jets in 1970, and the substantial growth only halted in 1973 with major recession. Until then the market developed in a fairy insophisticated way and was highly seasonal. Then came a second setback in 1981, but tourism remained remarkably resilient and expansion followed the pause. It was in the early 1980s that new markets and new segments emerged, when seasonability was first challenged, and quality and value for money were increasingly demanded.
Change will accelerate, marketers will need to identify change, producers and developers will need to respond to it. But standards have improved, competition has intensified and the expectations of the traveler are much higher.
All sales are made through the sales conversation. Now this is different from an ordinary social conversation because it has an objective, an aim, which is to sell the product, and so must follow a set pattern which always includes the same four elements in this order. These are rapport, questioning, presentation and commitment.
Rapport is the relationship which is built up with the customers. They must feel at ease in the sales environment and confident that the enquiry will be dealt with properly and in an appropriate manner. Of course, rapport must be maintained throughout your dealings with the customers, right through the sale and into any subsequent dealings. However, it must be established before questioning can take place.
Why do we need to question the client? We need to establish the client’s needs. We cannot sell a holiday if we do not know what type of holiday they want. Sometimes a client will volunteer this information themselves, especially when they have already made their choice, have chosen the product they wish to purchase. But in a real sale your first task is to find out exactly what they are looking for and the best way to do this to question effectively.
Before we go on to presentation, let us consider what good or effective questioning skills are. There are two types of questions: open and closed questions. The closed question is the one that invites a no or yes response. An open question is one that cannot be answered with no or yes. For instance: “Do you want a single room?” is a closed question. Whereas “What kind of room would you like?” is an open question. There are times when you will need to use closed questions, especially when you are checking information, but in the beginning you will find open questions much more effective. It forces the respondent to give more information, to explain more fully what they require. In this way you are able to elicit what they really want to buy. An open question always begins with one of the seven W words – so-called because they contain the letter W; when, where, who, how, which, what and why.
So what do you need to know in order to be able to sell your product? Well, you need to be able to establish what their material and human needs are. You’ll discover the material needs by asking such questions as “Who will be traveling?”, “How long for?”, “When do you want to go?” Human needs are catered for with “What” questions: “What sort of holiday do you want?”, “What are your hobbies?” Human needs as well as material needs must be part of your investigation before you suggest a holiday. Otherwise you will not be able to make a sensible suggestion.
You must also establish the client’s priorities. Everyone considers one part of their travel requirement to be the most important. These fall into four main types. People and their requirements: for instance, if it’s a family traveling, perhaps they require interconnecting rooms. Then there’s place, the destination may be of paramount importance. Thirdly, there’s the price. For some clients this governs their choice of destination and date. And lastly there’s the period. Most people are restricted in some way in the dates when they can travel.
Concerning price: of course it is often difficult to talk about money. But everyone tries to keep within a budget and wants to feel that they are getting value for money. It’s unwise to guess from a person’s appearance their financial standing. So what should you ask? Questions such as “What type of accommodation are you looking for?” and “What price range do you have in mind?”
You will not need to ask the question “why” unless you feel that it is necessary to persuade the client to change their views as to the suitability of a resort or holiday.
Relax on Goa’s golden beaches or swim in the luxuriant sea under the protection of Aguada Fort, built by the Portuguese to guard against intruders. Visit the unspoilt ecosystems of the Western Ghats and the habitat of the King Cobra. But no journey to Goa is complete without viewing the treasures of the ancient Hindu city of Goa which now lies in ruins. Nor should the Portuguese old city with its fine churches and temples, in particular the16th century Basilica of Bom Jesus and the Se Cathedral be missed. Finally, you’ll love shopping in the colourful markets where vendors in traditional costume sell everything from fabrics, jewellery and spices to a variety of souvenirs.
Set in lush tropical gardens leading on to the beach this modern hotel offers a good standard of accommodation in the main building or in garden cottages. All rooms are en suite, with air-conditioning, patio or balcony, TV, telephone and mini-bar. Regular entertainment includes beach barbecues, folk dances and live music.
Hotel Amenities
and Portuguese Indian
Scheduled from Gatwick to Dabolim. Transfer to hotel approximately 50 min.
Courtesy buses to the cities of Old Goa and Panaji.
Room Type: twin/shower or bath/patio or balcony
Board Basis: bed and breakfast
The Hotel/Package
Hotels: What is absolutely essential is the core – a well-equipped room with all the facilities expected by the customer. That must be perfect. Then what I expect of a hotel is the circle around this room such as meeting facilities, banquet facilities, bar and relaxation areas which form the first circle around the core. What I expect after that is the ambience, the quality of service and what I call the intangibles. The customer goes from the outside ring into the core because he expects the core to be there. I do not think people start with the core. They start at the intangible and the advantage of Hilton is it does have an intangible element around the core.
Staff: I think the most important thing for staff is attitude. Attitude assumes you have the right tools behind you. For instance, there must be the right check-in system at reception and room service must have the right back-up. So to me, attitude is the first ingredient but not the only ingredient. I started my career in a travel agency in Milan when I was seventeen. When you go into the agency you like the staff to ask how you are even if they have already done that 150 times that day because it is a unique experience to you. It is a tough job. I recognize it is not easy. The human touch – particularly in the hotel business, that is one place computers will never take over.
Rates: Pricing must be a local strategy in terms of what the hotel is. I am against discounting just for the sake of keeping the customer. There is a price for a product and the customer must pay that in order for the quality of service to be maintained. I do not believe in giving customers an impression which is different from reality. For instance mileage programmes – somebody is paying for these somewhere and that is not fair on the customer, but competition makes you do things which you do not think are necessarily right. If I find a solution I will do that. I do not have a magic solution. But I believe that all the zillions of miles which exist all over the world, somebody will pay for them and it will not be the shareholders. The cost will pass through the system through different pricing mechanisms. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Loyalty must be built on true relations rather than the fact you have a few miles from me.
Favourite Stay at a Hotel: Club Med in Bali. A combination of events contributed to this recent stay. One was the fact I was changing jobso I was very relaxed and it was also my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. What was particularly good was the ambience and the pleasant attitude of the staff.
Dislikes: The hotels I do not like are the ones with no personality or flavour or anything local. If there are some hotels in our group which need to move along that route we will do something.
One Wish for the Industry: That government and society realize travel and tourism is such a powerful economic driver. It has to be taken into serious planning consideration in all countries.
Vocabulary
stay at a hotel - останавливаться в гостинице
hotel - гостиница, отель
motel - гостиница для путешествующих на машине,