Sandra Morris, sales manager, Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts
Education: 12 O’ levels and one A’level.
Training: a Galileo time-management course and on the job training.
First travel job: with Far East hotel company, Omni Hotels in the UK, as sales manager (now known as Marco Polo Hotels).
Career path: joined Lotus cars in 1991 as sales and marketing executive, liaising with European clients and suppliers. Then joined Omni Hotels as sales manager, where I dealt with everything from fam trips, reservations, marketing and sales promotions, and trade shows, to implementing a client database. In 1998 joined Pan Pacific as sales manager with responsibility for sales and marketing activities for UKtour operating and consortia markets as well as markets in France, Italy, Spain,Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
Advice for people wishing to develop a career in travel: “Be flexible and enjoy getting up to go to work. Do not think of your job as being confined to travel but look at the skills you have and use the industry to develop them. There are so many different venues to choose from in the travel industry that a wide experience of different cultures and environments will help you find out what you are really good at. I don’t think of my job as being a travel job, Ithink of it as a sales and marketing job and my product is now travel. Before that it was luxury sports cars.”
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