Ferris State University - Hospitality Management - Event Management
INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE
Traveling Teams Inc.
It has been my honor to complete three separate internships with Traveling Teams Inc. from Northville, Michigan. I have held various roles such as Customer Service Representative, Comp Room Specialist, and Rooming List Coordinator in order to successfully complete hundreds of youth sporting events throughout the country.
TRAVELING TEAMS INC.
Rooming List Coordinating Intern, Abigail Anderson
Hospitality Management - Event Planning
HSMG 392, Summer 2019
Traveling Teams - Northville, Michigan
Over 500 tournaments contracted every year
Over 1 million room nights booked every year
General Manager: Halley Karas
Traveling Teams is a full service housing company that works with youth sports tournaments around the country to arrange hotel accommodations for the traveling families, free of charge. Our perfected tracking and technology allows us to provide outstanding accommodations to our tournaments and players better than any other housing company. We allow the families to sit back and relax while we take care of everything related to hotel stay from beginning to end.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Property Description
Organizational, Management Structure, and Work Environment
Marketing Management
Human Resource Management
Operations and Administration
Strategic Planning
Interview With Managers
Personal Assessment
Personal SWOT Analysis
PROPERTY DESCIPTION
21800 Haggerty Rd, Northville, Michigan 48167
Traveling Teams is located in Northville, Michigan at the Farmington Hills Business Complex on the top floor in Suite 300. Our office currently employees around 60 individuals in all departments.
We operate mainly out of our primary location in Northville, Michigan. However, recently we have just opened up a remote second location in Denver, Colorado with one of our senior account managers.​
ORGANIZATIONAL, MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE, AND WORK ENVIRONMENT
Our company began in 2001 when Carlo Tato, our founder and president, started his business on the simple concept of service. To this day he is still the President and the owner of Traveling Teams.
The organizational structure of the company is explained in the diagram up above and in most cases contain several employees in each division. The company works as a whole with a friendly and accepting culture in order to reach our ultimate goal. Our office is an open concept that allows creativity and positive energy to flow throughout the office. Most of our communication takes place face to face which has helped me improve with my face to face communication. Our second most used form of communication is email. In my time here I have gained outstanding email, face to face, and phone conversational skills. In comparison to other companies, I have gained more customer service and communication skills here than in other previously held roles.
I would describe the overall work environment as extremely pleasant. I enjoy the people and the atmosphere of this company and have to admit it is one of the main factors in my decision to continue my employment at Traveling Teams. The culture of this company is what I crave. Everyone is very open to bringing forward their ideas to management and our general manager, Halley is very supportive and will listen to any ideas you may have that can benefit the company. We have a form labeled the "Good Idea Form" that all employees can use to easily express their thoughts.
MARKETING MANAGEMENT
Our current guests are young athletes and their families throughout the United States. Since we only service youth sporting events, they are our primary and only guest type. Our target market is large tournament directors. Since we get all of our business from completing the housing needs for tournaments around the country, we need to partner with tournament directors to obtain their business and complete their housing needs for the traveling families.
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Some of our primary marketing strategies include referrals, trade shows, sales calls, and our website. We mainly use our in office sales team and our website as all of our advertising and marketing needs. Our most successful marketing tactic is attending trade shows. There we are able to speak to tournament directors and professionals in the field in order to generate qualified leads about tournaments throughout the country. Our least successful marketing tactic is our website. Most tournament directors do not go looking for a housing company for their tournaments. So in return, our website does not generate many qualified leads to contact for business.
The determination for room prices, breakfast items, and other guest accommodations differs depending on each hotel. The hotel that chooses to work with us will make the guidelines in a contract for room rate, food accommodations, parking, and other specifics. All of our contracts are handled through our hotel contracting employees in order to secure the best rates and accommodations for our guests. For example, we will never place our guests in a hotel that does not offer breakfast for the athletes and family members.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Traveling Teams employees 56 employees to date throughout the company. There are 8 management/supervisory positions held by employees that have been with this company for several years. The basic demographics of our managers is Caucasian and range in the ages of 30-40. Our managers are exceptional in motivation and leading by example. All managers also practice MBWA (Management by Walking Around). Since our managers practice MBWA, all employees communicate with them frequently on a day to day basis and form great relationships with management employees. The techniques that have been the most successful in motivating employees is the new open concept office we have introduced in the past year. The open concept office has really improved employee moral and motivation. The least successful management tactic is the hours that are scheduled and work load on employees. In this business we work long days and do not get many holidays off due to the business demand. I believe more qualified employees as our company continues to grow could cure an immense amount of employee stress.Â
When we do hire new employees, the training process is very simple and they are introduced to the company culture very quickly. Karen Hahn, our Human Resource manager handles all of the initial training, orientation, and introductions in the office before the training actually begins. All employees are introduced to the new coworker and able to congratulate her on joining our business. How they are trained after that depends on the position that they were hired for. All newly hired employees will be trained alongside someone from their department for their entire training. This makes things easier to learn and get to know  your trainer as a friend in our company. Most of our new employees are hired based on our employee referral program. I personally secured a full time job for my cousin while I was employed at my internship. Because of this program we have several family members, friends, and connections in our office and it truly creates a family culture.Â
The average hourly wage for entry level employees is $12. Health, dental, vision, life, retirement, and paid time off benefits are all provided by Traveling Teams. The average annual turnover rate for hourly and management personnel is roughly 15%.
MANAGEMENT'S DAILY FUNCTIONS
Managing the Daily Functions of Reservations - Here at Traveling Teams we have an entire department, comprised of 5-20 employees depending on peak times, that specifically take reservations from our guests. The guests are able to call our reservations department or go online to our website and book their reservations. They can also assist guests in cancelling or making changes to their reservations.
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Managing the Daily Functions of Check In and Room Assignment - After the reservations have been made by our reservations staff and online, since we are not the actual property they are staying at, we need to send our reservations over to the correct hotel via rooming list. Every day our rooming list team sends multiple rooming lists to all of our properties so the hotel sales manager can access our reservations and put the correct information into the hotel system. The rooming list contains check in dates, check out dates, room type, guest name, credit card information, and other guest information for their reservations.
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Managing the Daily Functions of Guest Accounting and Check Out - Since we are not the property the guests are attending, we cannot personally monitor when the guest checks out. In order to get that information for our records, our Accounting team reaches out to each property after all the guests have checked out and gets an updated pick up report as well as a completed invoice which lets our company know who stayed and for how long.
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Monitoring Guest Satisfaction - After all the guests have checked out and they have arrived back home, we send a customer satisfaction survey to all guests, group leaders, hotel sales managers, and tournament directors so they can give us feedback on our performance and we can work to improve in the future!
PROPERTY SERVICES
Maintenance - Since Traveling Teams does not own our office building, if anything were to need repairs and maintenance, the property owner, Friedman, will provide a maintenance worker to come and repair the problem.
Housekeeping - We are not a hotel so we do not need a housekeeping department, but Friedman does employee two cleaners that come in every day and clean the entire building. She is a very king, caring, and funny woman who really enjoys coming in every day and seeing all of us.
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Accounting - We have our own accounting department, like I stated above, that handles all of our personal accounting for our business, as well as all of our accounting measures with hotels for our events.
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Security - Our building does not hire any security. However, we do have key code access at both doors to our building as well as a key code access and alarm system in our office.
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Equipment - Most of our equipment in the office is classified as technology and mostly contains computers and phones. We own all of the computer equipment and phone equipment. The printers in our office are leased, but once the lease payments end we will own that equipment.
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Recycling - We do not have a "green" energy management program in our office. However, we do have Steve. Steve is an employee here that makes it one of his tasks to convince other employees to recycle. He takes all excess paper, plastic, and other materials to the recycling plant himself and works on his own green movement with our help.
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Computerization - Almost all of our functions in this office are automated and accessed through a computer. We have several websites and systems that have been designed by our technology team and outside contractors to work specifically for our company. All of these systems can provide management with statistics on what we are working on all day, how many calls we are making, how long we are spending on the phone, and other great information. In total, our computer systems work great for our business. We are always improving and finding better ways to use our computer systems more efficiently for us and our guests.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
The business of Traveling Teams is ever evolving and is in a direct relationship with people and the economy. The short term goals of Traveling Teams include continuous service and expediting of business, contracting more tournaments, building our staff, and expanding our territories to gain more business. On the other hand, the long term goals are much more intricate. The long term goals of Traveling Teams include establishing more operating locations, connecting other business ventures and expanding our revenue streams, and upgrading and implementing several new aspects of software that will improve every day work. The change of Traveling Teams in the next few years will be relatively small and business will continue to expand with our efforts. Within five or ten years, Traveling Teams plans to be fully operational in more than one location, have several new revenue streams from third party business contracts and other entrepreneurial pursuits, and plans to be thriving more than ever. The one trend that could impact the business of Traveling Teams would be a crash of the economy which would lead to less families traveling, but lower hotel rates, higher demand for our business, and other beneficial factors that could prove to be more helpful that harmful to our business.
INTERVIEWÂ WITH MANAGERS
HALLEY KARAS
General Manager
Halley Karas graduated from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee with a Political Science Bachelors degree. She immediately began her career with Hyatt Hotels at a property in Milwaukee as a concierge. After excelling in her position, she was transfered into the Hyatt Corporate Management Program at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. After completing the management program she started a position as the Assistant Front Office Manager at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago.
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From there she continued to climb the hotel ranks and hold several positions at multiple properties. She then accepted an opportunity as a General Manager at the Westin in Columbus. After becoming and expert in her role, she accepted a position with Traveling Teams as the General Manager that she still holds today.
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If she could change one thing about her career path so far, she wishes she would have traveled outside of the North MidWest to gain more experience. Although she wishes she could have traveled more, she enjoys and masters her position at Traveling Teams. She enjoys that the company is small and growing. She also enjoys the ability to craft the company in her position as it is growing and becoming more successful. The least favorite part of her job comes in the busy summer months. As an organized professional, she hates the busy season as no matter how much they prepare, she hates feeling behind. But, with an amazing team behind her, it keeps getting easier and easier every year. With that being said, the most challenging aspect of her position is getting ahead in the busy season and managing peak times of business.
In the future she believes that trends such as Marriott and Hilton lowering their pay cut from 10% to 7% could cause difficulties for Traveling Teams as those properties work with Traveling Teams on a frequent basis. She also is weary of a recession in the near future that could affect the business.
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Finally, in her last piece of advice to anyone entering the business environment today would be to work hard at your job to master and learn things without being asked. Have the drive and addiction to learn. Learn to move up and learn other aspects of positions in order to advance quickly. And always, love what you do.
STEVEN MARCINKOWSKI
Client Onboarding Manager
Steven Marcincowski graduated from Oakland University with a Bachelor's degree in marketing and continued his educated by obtaining a Masters in Business Administration with concentrations in finance and marketing before leaving the university. From there, he continue to show his Oakland Grizzly pride and accepted his first position as a Financial Analyst at OU Inc.
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From his position at OU Inc, Steven found Traveling Teams. He began his career with the company as a Team Travel Coordinator and flourished in the growing company. After several promotions, he had experienced the position of Team Travel Coordinator, Hotel Contractor, Account Manager, and finally settled as the Client Onboarding Manager where he has excelled for over a year.
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If he could change one thing about his career path so far, it would be his education path. While he did obtain two degrees, he wishes he would have waited to pursue his Masters Degree until working in the industry so he could gain hands on experience while studying the intricate aspects of the industry. However, he notes that education is key and he wouldn't change his for the world.
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In his current role as Client Onboarding Manager, Steve's main joy is the people. Every day he works to build and maintain crucial relationships to our business. His favorite aspect of his position is the autonomy and ability to make decisions that impact the company and business as a whole. However, his least favorite part of the position is the constantly changing dynamic and the need to always be able to adjust daily business practices. He also notes that the most challenging part of the position is that there is no textbook or guidelines because the work is constantly changing. It is a necessity in our business, but can be challenging at times. Steven's concerns for Traveling Teams include the trend in new lodging experiences and events that could draw from our business.
If he could give one last piece of advice to a professional entering the industry, it would be to always ask questions. He urges to challenge yourself and always push yourself to grow and be better. Accept advice, work hard, challenge yourself, and you will succeed.
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PERSONAL ASSESSMENT
My time at Traveling Teams has been anything short of fulfilling. The extraordinary people that I have had the chance to meet, the industry knowledge that I have gained, and the amount of skills that I have gained as a professional in the industry are truly unfathomable.Â
Throughout my three years of employment with Traveling Teams, I have had the opportunity to work within at least three different departments of the company and have come to learn the inner workings of our entire business operation. I strive to push the boundaries of my professional range, continue to expand my experience in the industry, and become a reliable and inspiring figure throughout the hospitality community.
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