Day 1

First day of work as an intern in Madrid at Forocio, an incoming travel agency that works mostly through the internet. It was sort of like an orientation kind of day. Met the two bosses, one of which is Frank, the owner with whom I had the interview via skype. There are two other ladies that work here and they do a lot of the organizing.
The ladies transfer information from online (most groups book their trips online, and not in person in the office) and onto spreadsheets for the entire office to see. All of this recording helps them know the basic information, but also they find it important to record from where these grous are coming from, city, state, and/or school or university. One of the ways the company finds out universities is through the students' emails. Usually students will use their school's .edu email and they go online to find out from what school it is. If a new school shows up, they start sending information packets to them and will try and market their services there. In addition to using emails to research from where the clients come, the company then send them emails abotu great deals and promotions they are currently offering. A very great marketing technique they use in order to get more emails is through their member-only website, forocioandfriends.com where once you sign up, you recieve great discounts on trips! In order to sign up, an email, must be provided.
After work I decided to go through their two webites, member site, and facebook/facebook group. The facebook needs to be more active and filled with more of their awesome trips and discounts. Not only does Forocio offer great fun trips, educational trips, and group tours, but also the internation student card which offeres students fabulous discounts around the world, and helps you with getting a cell phone, search for housing and other helpful necessities while abroad. I do run my parent's small businesses facebook, so I beleive I can do better with this one because it currently 164 members from around the world. I see so much potential with this.
I just wanted to mention they figured out how to optimize their page on Google so if you type "travel agency in Spain," their page will be the first option. Kudos, esepcially for recognizing it is mostly native English speakers that will be searching for that, more specifically - Americans.
Lastly, Forocio hosts a fiesta de intercambio every Wednesday. It's basically a party at a club for young adults from all over the world here in Madrid to go out and enjoy the nightlife with other international students. When Frank was talking to me and the other intern about this, he recommended that we attend and get opinions from the students that go and as well as ours. They offer and open bar, happy hour, and a lot of dancing. It is a great way for a lot of the incoming travel groups to meet with each other and even bring their friends and get Forocio's fun aspect out to the groups that are looking for a good time. (I forgot to mention that Forocio also has another website for more educational trips and for trip advisors who are not interested in the 'less cultural´aspects such as the La Tomatina or Running of the Bulls in Pamplona). I am very interested in going on Wednesday and bringing some other Pitt kids with me so we can gather an overall opinion and I can pass it on to Frank. I am sure after attending, I will be able to figure out better ways to reach out to these kids and their friends and school back whereever they came from abd let them know about Forocio's many exciting travel services!