Any Irish Sun Holiday Rep Jobs?

silverwex

Hey guys,

Been interested in doing repping work in Spain next year -- you know where you meet people off the planes, tell them about the island and generally make sure they have an enjoyable stay.

The only companies I see doing this are Thomas Cook, Thomson etc... ALL in the UK.

Can I still apply to these companies to become a rep for them, or do you need to be from the UK?

Are there ANY Irish companies that do this?

Help much appreciated!

Thanks.

board om

silverwex wrote: »

Hey guys,

Been interested in doing repping work in Spain next year -- you know where you meet people off the planes, tell them about the island and generally make sure they have an enjoyable stay.

The only companies I see doing this are Thomas Cook, Thomson etc... ALL in the UK.

Can I still apply to these companies to become a rep for them, or do you need to be from the UK?

Are there ANY Irish companies that do this?

Help much appreciated!

Thanks.

i used to know a few people who did this. there are 2 main companies and they own pretty much all the other companies. i know one of them is First Choice and the other is either Falcon or Budget Travel (Falcon own Budget Travel or Vice Versa, i cant remember which is which). so if you book a holiday through say JWT then you are actually booking with Falcon (or Budget Travel).

It is supposed to be great fun and you will meet some great people. the only problem is that it is really, really badly paid. you get a very low basic salary and then you make up the rest of your money on commission for selling the days excursions and phone cards to the people on holiday. so when they land you are pretty much pitching them the water parks, phone cards, pub crawls, etc and then you get paid commission on those. if you are good at selling those things you can make some nice money. but your accomodation is free which is pretty cool. it is definilty not a relaxing holiday job though becuase you really have to work at it. usually 1 or 2 days a week you will do a 20 hour shift because you take turns at picking the new holidayers up from the airport. so you would do your normal day shift and then after that you would head to the airport and pick up the passengers, or something like that. but that is shared between reps so as i said it would only be 1 or 2 times a week.

the good thing is that the local restaurants and bars give great back handers to the reps for bringing holidayers to their restaurants and bars. so you pretty much eat for free and drink for free while you are there. obviously your not supposed to favour the restaurantas and bars but it is one of the benefits of being in a position where you are recommending people where to eat and drink.

overall it is supposed to be great fun, just be prepared to work hard. i would say First Choice would be worth getting on to because they employ a lot of Irish people and they are one of the biggest in europe.

good luck.

silverwex

Cheers dude!

Anyone else?

supermouse

I was a rep for 4 years!! In my experience go with First Choice, of all my repping friends that I met out there, it was FC people were treated best with! Falcon and Budget are owned by the First Choice group yet Budget have their own reps!
Basically with repping I used work roughly a 16 hour day - this was very variable! You get 1.5 days off a week, usually used to catch up on sleep and cleaning uniform!!! There are a few different properties you can be assigned to, Family Plus, regular apartments, 4 and 5* hotels etc.
Family Plus reps do a lot of work!! You sometimes appear in evening shows and that, your hours are from 9am - 9pm and you work split shifts between these hours from 9-4 or 2-9. Your half day involves one of these shifts off!
Apartment reps usually deal with 3 or 4 apartment complexes at the one time, and your hours are 9-1.30 and 4-7. This time could be split by as many as 5 hotels!!! You need to be SUPER organised!! Same goes with 4 and 5* reps, but these jobs are sometimes given to more experience reps due to customer service expectations!

Outside your hours you will be required to ((resort depending!!)) take tours from bar crawls to theme nights to party nights! These usually start at 9pm and end around 4am or so! Great fun and you have a ball yourself!!!

Airport is tough, i used to be in Majorca with 6 airport days, 3 times some days!! Nightmares!! But you get used of it! I was often in resorts with only 1 airport day too!! Swings in roundabouts! Airports are grand, a break from hard work!!!

Have you any talents, extra talkative or sing or dance or anything like that?? If so, go with Entertainment!! You do have to be talented but i would prefer it any day over repping - i did it for 3 seasons and still keep in touch with about 50 of my guests!!!

Any further information PM me - i could go on and on and on and on but i wont!!

I say go for it - defo First Choice all the way!! Its touch, has a 80% drop out rate but if you stick it - without a doubt - you will have the time of your life!!!!

board om

supermouse wrote: »

I was a rep for 4 years!! In my experience go with First Choice, of all my repping friends that I met out there, it was FC people were treated best with! Falcon and Budget are owned by the First Choice group yet Budget have their own reps!
Basically with repping I used work roughly a 16 hour day - this was very variable! You get 1.5 days off a week, usually used to catch up on sleep and cleaning uniform!!! There are a few different properties you can be assigned to, Family Plus, regular apartments, 4 and 5* hotels etc.
Family Plus reps do a lot of work!! You sometimes appear in evening shows and that, your hours are from 9am - 9pm and you work split shifts between these hours from 9-4 or 2-9. Your half day involves one of these shifts off!
Apartment reps usually deal with 3 or 4 apartment complexes at the one time, and your hours are 9-1.30 and 4-7. This time could be split by as many as 5 hotels!!! You need to be SUPER organised!! Same goes with 4 and 5* reps, but these jobs are sometimes given to more experience reps due to customer service expectations!

Outside your hours you will be required to ((resort depending!!)) take tours from bar crawls to theme nights to party nights! These usually start at 9pm and end around 4am or so! Great fun and you have a ball yourself!!!

Airport is tough, i used to be in Majorca with 6 airport days, 3 times some days!! Nightmares!! But you get used of it! I was often in resorts with only 1 airport day too!! Swings in roundabouts! Airports are grand, a break from hard work!!!

Have you any talents, extra talkative or sing or dance or anything like that?? If so, go with Entertainment!! You do have to be talented but i would prefer it any day over repping - i did it for 3 seasons and still keep in touch with about 50 of my guests!!!

Any further information PM me - i could go on and on and on and on but i wont!!

I say go for it - defo First Choice all the way!! Its touch, has a 80% drop out rate but if you stick it - without a doubt - you will have the time of your life!!!!

there you go OP. you couldnt ask for a better description than that.

supermouse, what years were you there? the people i knew were working in first choice and they were based in majorca as well. i think it was the bouganvilla apartments. they absolutely loved it. i heard you meet some great people doing while your there.

supermouse

board om - that was only a brief description :):)
I did a summer in Almeria the south of spain in 2003, winter in Lanzarote 03, Summer 04 in Majorca, winter 04 in Gran Canaria, summer 05 in Cyprus and all winter in Cancun! Summer 06 in Egypt, winter 06 in Gran Can, and majority 07 in Dom Republic!!!
My god, i struggled to remember them so i did!! :)

Bougons are beautiful alright, craic is mighty cos the majority of the guests are irish! i did the 5*'s in Majorca.... great fun!!!

Emilie01

Hi everybody,

i'm a french person living in spain. I would love to work as a rep holidays but i don't really know how to do. I tried to contact big companies like first choice, thomas cook, markwanner... by mail but nobody answer me yet.
So just to ask if you need to be irish or english to be a rep? do you know some company in spain which i can contact?
thanks

Emilie

Naked Lepper

board om wrote: »

there you go OP. you couldnt ask for a better description than that.

supermouse, what years were you there? the people i knew were working in first choice and they were based in majorca as well. i think it was the bouganvilla apartments. they absolutely loved it. i heard you meet some great people doing while your there.

hehe i stayed there

supermouse

hehe - i think every Irish person has

Popa_irl

Hey lads!

Sorry to bring up a dead topic but im interesed in this. Basically i applied for an interview to become a "Overseas Holiday Advisor (Rep)" for summer 2009. I forgot about booking an interview, i was really put off because you HAVE to go to england to do the interview and flights are 150+ pounds.

I know all about whats its like BEING a rep but i want to know what i have to do to BECOME a rep? What do i do about my interview? Do i really need to have "Demonstrable customer service experience working with a diverse range of customer profiles"?

I want to do it, i think, but need advice about how to go about doing it.

Thanks lads!

supermouse

First Choice interview in Dublin - well they did when i applied! Sometimes the companies will pay your travel if you get the job so make sure you keep all receipts.
Surely they would have asked you for an interview as opposed to you booking one, no? What company did you apply to?
Interviews are usually role plays, presentations, selling tactics and written/maths exams. You need to be able to show you can sell sand to an Arab, you can speak about the most stupid topic in a room of about 2thousand people ( they tend to do the presentations at the end of the day when you will be familiar with your group therefore making public talking harder and i had to present a sales pitch on a lollipop....! ) and you have to show them you will be able to balance your liquidation ( the process of handing your sales over to accounts every week - worst part of the job - fact!!!! )

delboy86

Hi, just to let anyone interested in applying for a job as a holiday rep. I currently work for First Choice (UK) but their subsidary in Ireland is Falcon Holidays. They dont interview in Ireland anymore so I flew from Shannon to Manchester for my interview. Flights are pretty cheap on Ryanair (as little as €20 return if you book at the right time). Believe me it is well worth it, I worked in Menorca last year for three months, then the Canaries and I am going back to Menorca this year for six months. I am home in Ireland and can't wait to go, everyone is so miserable here at the moment and I can't hear anymore about this recession so if you want to get away from it all this is the perfect time. The great thing about the job is it gives you an opportunity to travel and you dont have to save lots of money before you go as they provide you with accommodation and a job. Best of luck if you do decide to apply.

gags89

delboy86 wrote: »

Hi, just to let anyone interested in applying for a job as a holiday rep. I currently work for First Choice (UK) but their subsidary in Ireland is Falcon Holidays. They dont interview in Ireland anymore so I flew from Shannon to Manchester for my interview. Flights are pretty cheap on Ryanair (as little as €20 return if you book at the right time). Believe me it is well worth it, I worked in Menorca last year for three months, then the Canaries and I am going back to Menorca this year for six months. I am home in Ireland and can't wait to go, everyone is so miserable here at the moment and I can't hear anymore about this recession so if you want to get away from it all this is the perfect time. The great thing about the job is it gives you an opportunity to travel and you dont have to save lots of money before you go as they provide you with accommodation and a job. Best of luck if you do decide to apply.

Hi delboy, I was just wondering if you could post up the link or something on where to apply to be a rep for first choice? Are all vacancies filled early or is there still availability?


thanks!

delboy86

hi,there are two websites you could look up including www.tuijobs.co.uk and www.firstchoice4jobs.co.uk!I checked on First Choice website and there doesn't seem to be any vacancies but you could still send them your C.V. as there is a pretty high turnover of staff so they are constantly needing new reps,even if just on standby for a while. I had my interview the middle of May and didn't go to resort until end of July.
Best of luck and let me know how you get on

gags89

thats great man, cheers for your quick response, The turnover thing is pretty good for me too as i would love to save up a bit of €€ here then head over!

Take it easy man!


ps love fools and horses - has to be the best british sitcom besides keeping up appearances for quite some time!

shoegirl

Fair dues to you, the reps really make me laugh. I went on a Budget Travel package 2 years ago and the dry cynicism of their reps was the best entertainment I've heard in years. Tough job I would say as there are a lot of scary people going on package holidays!! :cool:

Boyeen

delboy86 wrote: »

Hi, just to let anyone interested in applying for a job as a holiday rep. I currently work for First Choice (UK) but their subsidary in Ireland is Falcon Holidays. They dont interview in Ireland anymore so I flew from Shannon to Manchester for my interview. Flights are pretty cheap on Ryanair (as little as €20 return if you book at the right time). Believe me it is well worth it, I worked in Menorca last year for three months, then the Canaries and I am going back to Menorca this year for six months. I am home in Ireland and can't wait to go, everyone is so miserable here at the moment and I can't hear anymore about this recession so if you want to get away from it all this is the perfect time. The great thing about the job is it gives you an opportunity to travel and you dont have to save lots of money before you go as they provide you with accommodation and a job. Best of luck if you do decide to apply.

HOW do u get a job as a rep! im so stuck, have no idea about how to go about getting an interview? i saw that theres a holiday rep ticket diploma course online that costs like €85 or something, should i pay for that?? ur help is SOOOO needed!

season junky

hey boyeen, no u really dont need to do these online courses to get a job as a rep. I work for an english company call mark warner, aldoh as an irish person it was hard for me as i had to get a NI number and an english bank account, however companies like first choice will employ you havin an irish bank account. First choice is now owned by TUI as y may have read in previous posts.
I have been working as a rep since 2007 in places such as greece, corsica, courchevel and now currently in egypt.
Let me not fool you into thinking it is an easy job as it is no were near it, you must be prepared to have low wages and work long hours if required. The one thing these companies want to see is dat you have great confidence and customer service skills, dat you will go to any lengths to provide an excellent holiday experience for their customers. On the up side the craic is brilliant and the people you work with are brilliant fun some of the best times in my life ive had. But also aside from the low wages (with mark warner anyway) we get free watersports, activities, accomadation and food around the hotels so its worth it.
Im not sure wat other info you would like but dont hesitate to ask and i will supply.
The companies will now be recruiting for the forthcoming season 2010, so now is the best time to apply, u need to keep in mind that in the current climate they will have many people wanting the small amount of jobs aswel as their current employees wishing to stay with them but its not a long shot as there is a large turn over in these companies due to that hard work.
So if u tink you can handle some hard work and hard play apply.
Wishing you all the luck and happiness i have found in working seasons.