Plans for this week, plans for life in general

Earlier in the year I changed career paths.

I was initially working as a cartographer for a mining company, utilizing my GIS and cartography skills that I aquired during my Geography degree at UBC. However, it was when I was invited to speak on a dicussion panel at an important tourism conference, I began to seriously consider tourism as a career.

You see, for many years - heck, a decade - I had been participating in numerous online travel forums: Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, VirtualTourist, Fodor's, and most recently, TripAdvisor.

I think my involvement on travel forums started back in 1998 in the summer that I graduated high school. I was taking a web design program at a multimedia college. For a project, I had to create a mock website. For whatever reason, I decided to create a website for tourists coming to Vancouver. Part of my research brought me to a travel forum where tourists were asking all sorts of questions about Vancouver. You'd see questions like,

"I'm from Ireland and I'll be arriving in Vancouver next week. I only have 2 days. What are the must sees?"

or

"I'm a backpacker from Australia looking for a good hostel. Also, can somebody recommend a good place for breakfast that won't cost a fortune?"

And then you'd occasionally come across a can of worms where an individual would ask for comparisons between two rival cities.

Whenever questions would go unanswered, and if I knew the answer, I always felt compelled to write. I always felt, having lived in Vancouver my whole life, I could probably offer a perspective that differed from the same old cliches found in tourism literature.

Thus began my foray into tourism.

As a student at UBC, thanks to my multimedia training, I was employed in their IT department. However, I also worked two summer jobs in the tourism industry; once for a whale watching company and another for Tourism Vancouver. Despite the meager pay and irregular schedules, those tourism jobs were the most memorable. But for those very real reasons, I never considered them as careers. That was, of course, until I was invited to speak at that tourism conference.

Immediately following the conference, I was inspired and motivated. I seriously contemplated quitting my unfulfilling cartography job for a more dynamic position in tourism. And that's exactly what I did. Almost immediately I was offered the position of tour coordinator for a small but growing budget tour operator that specialized in providing tours to ESL students (as Vancouver has a massive ESL market). I was welcomed to that company with open arms and it was refreshing. The work environment was much more social and inclusive, not like the secretive and patronizing environment I had faced earlier at the mining company. As tour coordinator came much responsibility which I openly embraced, but little would I know how much that job would consume me.

You see, the ESL market in Vancouver tends to be fickle - most students book only a day or two before the date of departure. As a result, when you're trying to coordinate the logistics of multiple day tours, there's only so much prep work you can accomplish. While hotels in high demand areas, like Banff, would need rooming lists as early as two weeks before check-in, I would realistically only be able to provide to them the day or two before. Because of this, I needed to be in constant communication with hotels to make sure they would not get rid of my rooms and that yes, the rooming list was on its way. I would also write the tour itinerary, write a weekly newsletter to all the tour guides, and I would write handouts for all the passengers on the tour bus, provide a tour kit with maps, first aid kits, prizes, and all the confirmation numbers for the pre-organized activities. Only on the evening before a tour could I begin to compile my spreadsheets for passenger lists, emergency contact lists, activity sign up sheets, and the final rooming list. Often I would be at work until 8 or 9pm.

On the following morning, the morning of the tour, I would wake up at 5am, walk to the office, pick up all the supplies and wheel them down to the departure location to oversee that everything runs smoothly. I would see that the driver would arrive on time with the coach and that the coach was indeed the exact size I requested. I would make sure that the tour guide arrived and knew what coach they were supposed to be on. We would then await for all the students to arrive, and there would be hundreds.

If students were late, I had to provide them with information on how they could meet up with their tour (ie: Greyhound). You learn quite quickly that many have no sense of the sheer vastness of Canada and that while mountains surround Vancouver, the Rockies are 800km (a good day's driving) away and that no, it's probably not a good idea to catch up to your group with a taxi.

The majority of the students were from Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, with a sprinkle of students from Germany, Switzerland, France, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. This often made for an interesting dynamic and one that I had to take into account when I made the rooming lists.

There was a delicate art to creating those rooming lists. If a group of friends requested to be together, I'd make sure they were in the same room. I would do that first. Then, if there were students from the same school, I would make sure that they would be put in the same room. Girls would by default be roomed with other girls, and guys with other guys. Of course, if students booked individually without mentioning their friends or what school they attended, sometimes they got split up - something that would only become apparent on the morning of the departure. Sometimes you would get solo travellers - even backpackers from Australia, Ireland, or the UK - and I'd make sure they were together. With trial and error, you began to realize what works and what doesn't. Brazilians were typically the most rambunctious on tour while the Japanese students were the polar opposites. To mix the two in the same room was often a recipe for disaster so I'd try to keep people from the same culture together in the same rooms as possible. But even with the most meticulous planning, things always happened - things you could never plan for.

A female student with an unfamiliar foreign name accidentally gets listed as a male on the reservation system. Not a big deal until you look at the rooming list and see that she's in a room with three other guys! That's unacceptable.

Four macho guys refuse to share a room together even though it's what was advertised and it's what they paid for.

A hotel oversells their rooms.

A bus breaks down while climbing a mountainous pass in 40° Celsius heat - the rescue bus is four hours away. Set itinerary must be dramatically altered, set activities must be rescheduled if possible.

The rescue bus has one seat less than there are passengers.

A group of students are persistently 20 minutes late, delaying the group and annoying the rest of the passengers. Itinerary must be altered.

Two students fail to show up at the designated meeting spots and are left behind after 20 minutes of looking. Itinerary must be altered.

Students trash a hotel room and the hotel loses customers because of the noise.

The confirmation number supplied doesn't match the number on file.

A group of friends who did not specify their rooming options are bawling because they are split up into three different hotel rooms and there's no flexibility in the rooming list, plus the hotel is sold out.

A serious rock slide on a long weekend cuts off the main highway, adding a 12 hour detour and a cancellation of a scheduled activity. Itinerary must be dramatically altered.

A tour guide contradicts the company refund policy resulting in hundreds of students expecting to get their money back for a cancelled activity that was always advertised as free.

And so on.

Needless to say, I learned to expect the unexpected rather quickly. My on-the-fly problem solving skills were much improved. But because of this, I could never separate myself from this job. On weekends, especially long weekends, my phone would be ringing all the time. And this is how this job consumed me.

There were days when I would sit at my desk and uncontrollably scratch my head until it bled. There were weekends when my phone would ring off the hook and I would break down crying due to mental exhaustion. Whenever my cell phone would ring while I was at home, my body would tense up with anxiety. I could never separate myself from the job and I never had a moment to myself. However, I kept telling myself to stick around for one full year and use the experience to get myself into a more stable position.

So when September came around and I was laid off, it was a big relief. A big, big relief. Two of us were actually let go solely due to a slowing in tourism and a severe lack in monetary funds; they simply couldn't afford to keep us on throughout the year. Problem solved. The good news is that I still have a great relationship with my former employers - they were genuinely sad to see me go. I really feel bad for the only other tour coordinator who already had too much on her plate. I'm just glad it's not me.

Since my layoff I have been taking time to really focus on what it is I want to do with my life, career-wise. While I have been looking at what jobs are available, I have also been taking a much-needed break. I'm savouring this right now as I know it's a rare luxury.

In late September I joined my sister in Victoria while she did anthropological research in the BC Archives and at the BC Legislative Library. I should probably write it into a separate posting, but here are a few scenes from that week:

The BC Parliament Building tour

My sister along the waterfront by Dallas Road

The First Peoples Gallery at the Royal BC Museum

October was filled with local events: Thanksgiving dinner, visits to Steveston, going away parties, dinners with friends, Halloween parties, etc.

November - I can't believe it's the 13th already!

Early last week, after contemplating the idea for months, we purchased an all-inclusive seven day getaway to the Mayan Riviera on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It'll be our first experience at an all-inclusive resort, but I think we'll be able to manage. ;) Generally it's not the type of thing we'd go for, but we just want relaxation and sunshine. The Mayan ruins at Tulum and the coral reef snorkeling don't sound so shabby either! This will be our first time to the Caribbean and we're quite looking forward to it.

As I write this, I am also packing and preparing, for the flight leaves in... T-minus 9 hours! We sleep on the plane for the 6 hour journey and we arrive at the Cancun airport just after 9am. It's an hour drive to our resort where we stay for 7 days. We return to Vancouver next Friday at 3pm. So as I scramble around here packing and doing last minute laundry, you will now understand why you won't see another post for the next week.