LEADERSHIP ESSAY - CHEVENING SCHOLARSHIP
"In which college can I get a degree in tourism, dad?" I - a12-year-old girl - asked.
My dad was very reluctant: "Why do you ask?"
I quickly replied: "My teacher told us that a tour guide could travel to many countries, meet many people and experience a variety of things that we would be never able to learn in textbook. It sounds such a wonderful job".
My mom spoke up: "Tour guide is a job that requires a lot travelling on car for long days and it's mostly for boys. I heard many scary stories about female tour guides. You just need to study well and then get degree in teaching or being an accountant in the future".
I didn't let those words in mind. When I passed university entrance examination, I chose to major in Tourism & Hospitality Administration to prove what my parents thought was wrong. Being a freshman, I joined a non-profit organization as a free tour guide for backpackers travelling to Hanoi and got first tips from them. I took part in a tour designing competition with 2 other classmates and won the 3rd prize among hundreds of candidates at college. I joined a project of inspecting accommodation around Hanoi and got paid for my own English course. Since then, my family members really started changing their mind in my future job.
After graduation, I wanted to get to know more how a travel agency operated so I applied as a travel consultant at X company in which I could learn about destinations and work with international clients. They had 3 different teams in sales departments: A, B and lastly Myanmar - a new one for just one year and a half that I would be the team leader for this market. It was such a big challenge since I have never been there before. After several months, we did not get much profit from Myanmar tours that made me very stressed. I proposed our CEO to let me inspect Myanmar because working via the 3rd party was not effective. Having got acceptance, another colleague and I spent two weeks visiting the best highlights there, experiencing local services and getting necessary documents. After returning, we re-wrote marketing contents and made a presentation for CEO and involved departments to indicate why clients weren't convinced to purchase our tours. I added up essential advices to finalize booking quickly, how to persuade clients to return in the future by taking the best care during and after tour finished. Surprisingly, number of online requests was dramatically increased. In 2017, although Myanmar team didn't get the biggest profit, we got the most outstanding feedbacks with high praises on Tripadvisor and especially, double number of tour bookings compared to 2016 and helped our company brand widely known to Myanmar suppliers.
12 years ago, I never knew exactly what tourism was but I didn't give up my dream and at least I could change my parents' mind about my job.Hi Hedy,
I think you need to change your introduction in another way. In my opinion, there are too many words wasted to explain the conversation.
Start right away by explaining your current capabilities and examples of your leadership in professional life. It would be better if you could explain in detail the process as a leader
