ICON College of Technology and Management

Department of Travel & Tourism Management

BTEC HND in Travel and Tourism Management

Coursework

Personal and Professional Development

Tutor: Mr Dan Sookun

Submitted by

ID No: 10933

Session: April 2013

Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

Task 1/a

Self Managed Learning refers to individuals who manage their own learning,
who take responsibility for their decisions about what, how, when and why they learn.
Every person prefers different learning styles and techniques. Each learner has a mix
of learning styles and he can realize that sometimes he has a dominant learning style
or that he is using a different style in different circumstances. There is no right mixed
or styles fixed. In schools are used linguistic and logical teaching methods. Self
managed learning can restrict the learner from learning other than what the learner
has selected.

Bolhuis (1996) and Garrison (1997) said about self-directed learning that
individuals are responsible owners and managers of their own learning process. In
their conception SDL integrates self-management which includes the management
of the context, the social setting, resources and actions; with self-monitoring, the
process whereby the learners monitor, evaluate and regulate their cognitive learning
strategies.

Personal and professional development its helping us to participate in an

efficient and constructive way to the social and professional life and as well is giving
us confidence in managing own personal and professional skills to achieve our
objectives. All our objectives should be smart, realistic, measurable, timely and of
course they must be achievable.

The benefits of self- managed learning can have a huge impact on the learner
because he learns on his own, he learns by doing mistakes and he has no fear of
failure because he expects the unexpected. All these things in my opinion gives the
learner courage to continue to fight in achieving his goals.

Benefits of self- managed learning:

Time: The learner chooses his own schedule and he can adapt his
learning process to his personal agenda, without depending on time
schedules imposed by others. The learner can study on his own free
time, dead time and in this way he is saving the organisation s time.
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

The organisation does not have to give the learner time to learn during
working hours.

Cost: It is very important that there is no cost because the learner is

studying in his own time. The resources are provided by the learner and
not by the organization. This is a big benefit for the organisation
because they save money.

Control: This benefit has a big importance for the learner because
he has total control. There is no supervisor looking over his shoulders
all the time and this gives him confidence.

Motivation: is very important in order that the learning process has

fruitful results.

No frustration / Make no mistakes: When the learner is

studying by himself he expects the unexpected. Even if he does
mistakes his learning from them giving him more courage, confidence
and he has no fear of failure.

Confidence: good results in the learners self managed learning is

raising his confidence in his own strengths.

Subject matter: The learner chooses his own subjects but they
must be fit and to contribute towards his career interests.

b) Lifelong learning can be done by:

Research: When the learner perform research he is engaging,

studying something in a detailed, accurate manner. Researching is the
best way to learn because when the learner is doing research he is
enriching his knowledge, in a systematically way, increasing his stock of
knowledge.

Training: It is a systematic process to achieve knowledge, skills and

competencies. It is helping the learner to improve his capacity,
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

capability and his performance, to learn something new. Another

important thing is that training has several benefits not only for the
learner but also for the organisation. Training can be divided in: inhouse
training by reading books, researching on a particular subject matter,
and outhouse training by attending seminars, conferences, colleges.

Mentoring: A more experienced and knowledgeable person is

teaching a less experienced person and his learning at the same time
too by increasing his knowledge. There are many ways that mentoring
can help a learner but it needs to be allocated time for this. Mentors can
help learners to set career goals and start taking steps to realize them.

Coaching: As a coach, you must help and teach the others to exceed
their limits, to reach their real potential and to benefit of all their
strongest wishes and purposes becoming true. Coaching can bring
considerable benefits, it helps managers to get the most from their
teams,it stimulates employee engagement and develop high performing
workplaces, but in the same time costs the company money and time.
Conferences: These help the learner to meet new people and to
share their knowledge. In fact a conference means a meeting of people
who speak about a certain topic. Usually to attend a conference is
expensive even for a company, organization, but they still do it to
motivate their employees and to increase their knowledge.

Interviews: An interview is a conversation between two or more

people where questions are asked in order to find out facts or
statements from the person whos interviewed. Some companies and
organizations pretend they have available jobs only to see how the job
seekers think and what decisions they would take in certain
circumstances, they learn how people perceive things and how they
interprete their perceptions.

Teamworking: is very useful for companies, organizations because

it can lead to better decisions, products and services. Some of the
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

benefits of teamworking are problems solving because each team

member has the responsibility to contribute with his idea to find the best
possible solution; accomplish tasks faster by dividing the work to teams;
developing relationships.

Secondments: This means that the person who is employed

changes job for a temporal period of time within the same company or
get transfered to another organisation for a period of time. Two of the
main benefits of secondments are that it helps the organisation to
reduce the costs and the learner to achieve another knowledge, skills
and confidence.

Seminars: usually are made between small groups of people

focusing each time on a particular subject. Organizations use them to
inform and instruct in a subject and for intending to improve the
knowledge of people.

VAK (Visual Auditory Kinesthetic): Learners use

visual, auditory and kinaesthetic modalities to receive and learn new
information and experiences. They can choose Visual learning style
which involves the use of seen or observed things, including pictures,
demonstrations, displays, handouts, films, flip-chart, diagrams; auditory
learning style which transfers the information through listening: to the
spoken word, of self or others, of sounds and noises; kinesthetic
learning involving physical experience - touching, feeling, holding,
doing.

Task 2/a

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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

A skills audit is the process for measuring and recording the skills of an
individual or a group. In an organisation, the purpose of a skill audit is to identify the
skills and knowledge that are required or the skills and knowledge that the
organisation currently has (Carrel et al, 2002). Another purpose for a skills audit is to
determine training needs so that the organisation can improve its skills and
knowledge.

According to Carrell et al (2002) the implementation of a skills audit process

to inform Human resource planning efforts is essential. Strategic Human Resource
management focuses on integrating and relating skills development to business
strategy. By doing the simple skills audit route, the organizations can ensure that
skills development is proactive and successful.

Skills Audit

Present occupation Future occupation

(knowledge/skills) (knowledge/skills)

Student and waitress Hotel manager

High School Certificate HND in TTM Certificate

Ambitious Good communicator skills

Ability to learn from others Ability to solve problems

Listening skills People skill

Good time manager Ability to teach and train others

Confidence Ability to cope with difficult people

As a present occupation Im a student and I work as a waitress. Regarding

knowledge I have the High School Certificate. When I started this job I had no
experience but I was ambitious and I had the ability to learn from others. I try to
manage my time in a productive way because I want to study to have a better job
and future and in the same time I have to work. My ability to listening skills helped me
to understand customer satisfaction, to achieve productivity and to make less
mistakes, information sharing increased and all these things brought to a more
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

creative and innovative work. I have a lot of confidence that I will succeed in
achieving my goals.
As a future occupation I want to be a hotel manager. I will graduate the
College, get my HND in TTM Certificate and then I will have the possibility to seek
for this job. As future skills I am sure that I will have better communicator skills
because I will have the responsibility of day-to-day management of the hotel and its
staff. Other responsibilities are: to recruite staff, to train and to monitor them; to plan
the work schedules for staff; to meet and greet the customers and to deal with
customer who are not satisfied and complain.
My objective of becoming a hotel manager it is smart, achievable and
measurable. A long term objective because it is going to take between 3-5 years to
achieve it.

b) Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths Weaknesses

people knowledge/skill education

problem solving techniques language
responsibility finance
flexibility
Opportunities Threats

teamwork legislation
attend classes time
volunteer work external circumstances
setting priorities low salaries

Strengths:

people knowledge/skill: I achieved this strength in school from my

teachers and at the working place by dealing with plenty of people. I had to
recognize their behavior and needs to adapt accordingly.
problem solving techniques: I believe that it is important to try and understand
the essence of the problems that we are experiencing. Usually when I have a
problem, I try to define it, to find a possible solution, to think of the
consequences and to implement it.

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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

responsibility: this strength I achieved in time from my life long experience

and learning from others. I understood the importance of taking responsibility
of your own actions, even if it is about family, school, work or social life.
flexibility: from my own experience and believes to be flexible means to have
an opened mind, to be able to change your behavior according to the
situations.
Weaknesses:
education: in most cases education can be a problem in achieving your
objective because without a university diploma nobody and none of the
organizations, companies are going to give you a chance to express yourself.
language: a foreign language can be quiet difficult to master. It is very
important to speak a foreign language if you go in another country to work or
to study. There are many ways to improve this weakness, to make it an
opportunity, to attend classes.
finance: money have their importance as well in achieving your objectives.
Without money it is very hard, almost impossible to achieve your goals.

Opportunities:
teamwork: a very good opportunity to learn new things and ideas from others,
it stifles creativity and individuality and promote good working relationships.
attend classes: in most cases there is a cost in attending classes but this
opportunity can help you to improve your weaknesses and to achieve your
objective.
volunteer work: in one way it is a non profit work, there is no financial gain and
on the other way it is a unique experience, a good opportunity to work and
learn from experts, to develop your skills and to socialize.
setting priorities: this means to get organized, to set up your priorities, your
activity, your day to day tasks. We must make sure that our daily activities
do not take precedence over our goals, objectives and vice versa.

Threats:

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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

legislation or government policies which have very strict rules and regulations
that sometimes can be an obstacle in achieving your goal. For example if your
objective is to open a business you need premises license, personal license,
which sometimes are hard to get or you get different restrictions such as no
sell of alcohol, no cigarettes.
time: it can be a serious threat in achieving your goal because you have to be
a good time manager, to control the time spent on specific activities and to
focus on your objective. Time management is a necessity in any project
development because it determines the project completion time and scope.
external circumstances: which can be destructive in achieving your goal,
sometimes can make you lose your faith or even to abandon your objective.
low salaries: there are cases when you wish to become something because
you love that job, its your passion and you become discouraged because is
very bad paid. In this case low salaries can become an obstacle in achieving
your goal.

c) Personal and Professional Development Plan

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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

Name: Ilica Patricia Date: 01/04/2013

Department: Travel and Tourism Management Supervisor: Dan Sookun
Short-Term Time Mid-Term Time Long-Term Time
Frame Frame Frame
What do I want to What do I want to What do I want to
accomplish in the accomplish in the accomplish in the
next three to 6 next 6 months to 2 next 3 to 5 years
months years?
Section 1 My
Goals Gain more Attend and Work in a hotel to
What are my confidence complete the get experience
overall goals that I Travel and Tourism
want to accomplish Managemnt course
in this time period? Pass my exams on Develop contacts
the first semester with hotel industry

Become a hotel
manager

Section 2 Skills
and Knowledge to Learn how to do Hospitality skill People knowledge
be Learned What and write
specifically do I assignment
need to learn? Finance skill Hotel knowledge:
What project do I Practice skills hotel standards,
need to work on? learnt from class culture
Customer service
Take into knowledge
consideration the
advises from my
mentors
Section 3 How am I
going to acquire Research on hotel Inhouse training Team work
the skills and management
knowledge? How Outhouse training Secondments
am I going to do Attend specialised
this project? classes Get involved in Volunteer work
course activity and
Seminars group work

Section 4
Resources Time to learn and Financial support Confidence
What resources do prepare for exams
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

I need? Patience

Section 5 Time Monday Friday Mon, Thu and Fri Fri- Sun
Schedule Day time: 9-11pm Night time: 20- Evening time: 18-
What is my time Read and asses 22pm 20pm
schedule? the information Read books about Read
from my courses travel and tourism, communication
Evening time: 17- about hotel books, customer
19pm management. service and
Write assignment management
books
Start
When will I start? 06/02/2013 06/02/2013 06/02/2013

Finish Ongoing Ongoing I expect to finish

When do I expect throughout study throughout study and have gained
to finish? (2013-2015) enough experience
by 2018
Section 6 Years Years
Completion In six months In 2 years In 5 years
When have I
completed each
step?

Task 3/a Personal development includes activities that improve the learners
awareness and identity, it develops his talent and potential, facilitate employability,
enhance quality of life and it contributes to the realisation of dreams and aspirations.
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

The goals, objectives in a PPD Plan must be realistic, measurable, attainable and
timely.
My objective is to become a hotel manager. In order to achieve this goal I have
to follow a few steps, such as short term, mid term and long term goal. My
short- term goal is to pass my exams on the first semester at TTM and to gain more
confidence in my own strengths. As am mid term goal I want to attend and
complete the Travel and Tourism Management course. Regarding to my long term
goal I wish to work in a hotel in order to get the required experience and to develop
contacts with hotel industry.
To be able to achieve my objective, I need lots of skills and knowledge, such
as hospitality skill, people knowledge, finance skill, customer service knowledge. To
acquire these necessary skills I have to attend specialized classes, seminars, training
which can be in house training or outhouse training, I need to get involved in course
activity, group work and secondments. Volunteer work is as well a very useful way to
gain experience. Sometimes we have to lose something in order to achieve our
goals.
As resources I believe that I need first of all to have confidence in myself and
patience. Another important resource is time because is needed a lot of time to
prepare and learn. Money, financial support have a major importance because
without them I cannot graduate the College and get the required diploma.
Regarding time, I must be a good time manager because I have to divide my
time between work and study. Every day I have to find time for learning, reading
books, researching and writing assignment.
I have completed my short term goal in six months. My objective in this
period was to pass all my exams and I have done it by working hard, by practicing
skills learnt from class and by taking into consideration the advises from my mentors.
I expect to complete my mid term goal by 2015, in 2 years because at the
moment I am still a student. Relating to my long term goal, I expect to complete it
by 2018, in 5 years. Until then I have a long hard working way.
b) Based on my PPD Plan where I have explained in detail what am I going to
do to achieve my goal of becoming a hotel manager, I would like to relate you how
my dream came true. I would like to start by saying that to become a hotel manager

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requires a combination of education and experience. Even if you have a degree in

hotel management and hospitality, it is very hard to find this kind of job without years
of experience in hospitality industry. This is because as a hotel manager you need to
understand all the aspects of running a hotel, its strategies, culture and everything
from reservations, house - keeping to managing staff.
In my 1st year of college I got married and in my 2 nd year I had to interrupt my
studies because I was pregnant and I gave birth to a child. I lost one semester and
instead of graduating the college in 2 years I graduate it in 2 years and a half. This
was my first obstacle in achieving my goal. After this I went for further studies at
Oxford University to attend Tourism Hospitality Management. It was very hard for me
because I had to go to classes, to study home and take care of my baby too. I am
satisfied and happy because I was ambitious and I had a lot of confidence in myself
and I graduated with good marks at Oxford University too. After this I found a job as a
receptionist in Hilton Hotels. I worked there for more than 2 years and I tried to learn
everything about this hotel, its management strategies and culture. One day I got the
chance to go to work on secondment because our hotel manager was sick and
stayed in hospital for more than 2 months. I replaced her and I considered this the
challenge of my life. After a while I realized that this was my objective a few years
ago. I learnt a lot in that period and I got some experience too. After she came back I
retook my job as a receptionist. I was happy that I achieved my objective even if it
was for a few months.
In 2020 Hilton Hotels opened a new branch outside London and they
proposed me to be a hotel manager there. I gladly accepted the job and I moved
outside London with my family. At the end I realized that I was thinking to achieve my
goal in 5 years and in fact took me almost 8 years to achieve it, years of hard work,
confidence and patience.

Task 4/ a

Problems and conflicts at workplace happen all the time and in some cases
they can be an opportunity to improve the system and the relationships. When we
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face a problem we tend to get afraid or we feel uncomfortable and we want it go

away, we believe and feel that we have to come up with an answer, solution and it
has to be the right one or in other cases we try to blame someone else. According to
the article written by Hicks (2001), there are a few steps we have to take into
consideration in problem solving process: we have to identify the issues, to
understand everyone s interest, to think of the possible solutions, to evaluate the
options, to select an option and to evaluate it.
In the table bellow I will identify the problems and conflicts I had at my
workplace and the solutions.

Objectives Problems / Conflicts Solutions

make a
discrimination and chose a cafe bar
name
conflicts between staff restaurant manager

profit growth
attract customers leafleting

sales growth make promotions,

organize parties,
weddings.

It was a new opened cafe bar restaurant. I started there as a waitresse. The
main objectives of the restaurant were to make a name, a brand and profit growth.
The owner did not have to much experience in this field too and appeared many
problems and conflicts between staff. Discrimination was one of the conflicts because
we were there two Romanian girls and two Bulgarian girls working as waitresses and
kitchen staff were Turkish. After we chose a restaurant manager the situation
changed completely. As I was proposed as a manager I was thinking how to attract
more customers so I dont have to fire any staff member. I started to do leafleting with
the restaurant staff in order to save some money because I had no money allocated
for this matter. We did leafleting in front of the restaurant, in the train station and on
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the streets around that area. I can say that I was satisfied that it worked. More and
more customers started to come.
Moreover after doing some research in the area and finding out that mostly are
Romanians living here, I started to make publicity that we organize Romanian nights
with life music, weddings and birthday parties with traditional Romanian food. As a
result it was a great success for me. In order to attract English people for the
breakfast and lunch we used to give teas and coffees on the house and to have
every day special home made food at a lower price. Every day for lunch was cooked
2 3 kinds of different meals so the customers could chose: traditional Turkish food,
traditional Romanian food, traditional Lithuanian food.
As a conclusion I would like to say that I was very happy and satisfied of my
achievements. Under my eyes and my management the restaurant became to have
a name. It was a hard long way to reach at this point but most important is that I had
never lost my faith and confidence.

b) Styles of communication / Methods of communication

John Jackson and Lorraine Bosse - Smith (2008), quoted Dorothy Nevill and
said that the real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right
place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment .
Each person has a different personality and communication style which plays an
important role in their personal perspective. Based on different situations we all use a
combination of communication styles. There are four types of communication styles:
passive, aggressive, assertive, passive - aggressive.
Passive communication is a style in which individuals avoid to express their
opinions or feelings. They protect their rights, identify and find their needs, and
very often they feel depressed because they are stuck and hopeless.
Aggressive communication is a style in which individuals express their feelings
and opinions in a way that they dont keep in mind the rights of others,
somethimes they are verbally or physically abusive. Another characteristic is
that they try to dominate other people, criticize, blame and are impulsive.
Assertive communication is a style in which individuals say, in a clear and
precise way, their opinions and feelings, carrying for the rights of other people.
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Department of Travel and Tourism Management Assignment: Personal and Professional Development

They express their feelings clearly, appropriately, respectfully and they dont
allow others to abuse or manipulate them. (Jackson and Smith, 2008)
Passive - aggresive communication is the style in which individuals appear
passive on the surface but they are really acting out of anger. They usually
deny there is a problem and appear cooperative while in purpose they do
things to annoy and disrupt.
Communication is very important in our day -to -day life and we can do nothing
without using the methods of communication to express ourselves for any purpose.
There are diffrent methods of communication such as: oral communication, writen
communication, face to face communication, body language.

Oral Communication is the most common method of communication, whether

we use it to present some important data or to present something in a
meeting. E.g phone conversations.

Written Communication we use it when we want to provide detailed

information. E.g figures and facts, staff magazines, notices.

Face-to-face communication makes possible more detailed discussions to

clarify diffrent issues regarding a problem, in a meeting or even in group work.

Body Language is a well known method of communication and is called as

nonverbal communication. Here is included: gesture, posture, facial
expression. (Jackson and Smith, 2008)

References:

Bolhuis, S. (1996), Towards Active and Selfdirected Learning. Preparing for

Lifelong Learning, with Reference to Dutch Secondary Education. Paper
presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, New York.

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Carrell et al, (2002), Human Resource Management in South Africa, Thomson,

2nd ed.
Garrison, D.R, (1997), Self-directed learning: Toward a comprehensive model.
In Adult Education Quarterly.

Information from my course, notes from Personal and Professional

Development. Prof. Dan Sookun.
John Jackson and Lorraine Bosse - Smith, (2008) Leveraging your
communication style.
Tim Hicks, (2001), Negotiation Journal, the article "Another Look At Identity-
Based Conflict: The Roots of Conflict in the Psychology of Consciousness",
Vol. 17.

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