Portuguese Placement for Reid Kerr Students

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Two students from Reid Kerr College’s HND travel & tourism course are about to start a work placement with a difference. While their colleagues on the course are getting work experience in local travel agencies, call centres and visitor attractions, Ashley McLardie 20, from Paisley and Nadia Easdon 19 from Erskine are off to Portugal to undertake their work placements.

The week long placement as a holiday representative with Style Holidays is in the Algarve, and the girls are looking forward to the experience. Ashley has always wanted to be an overseas rep and she thinks this work placement will help her achieve her ambition. “It’s very difficult to get jobs as overseas reps unless you’ve already worked in the industry, and this work placement will give us invaluable experience.”

Clive Jewell, the manager of Style Holidays said, “We are delighted to be able to offer these students the chance to work with us here in Portugal and if this pilot project is a success, we would hope to be able to offer other students from Reid Kerr similar opportunities in the future.”

Ashley Nicholson, lecturer at Reid Kerr who organised the work placement said “the courses we offer here at the college have given the girls a really good grounding in the knowledge and skills that they need to succeed in the travel industry, but at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for the real life experience which this work placement will give them.”

In addition to the Portuguese work placement, Nadia and Ashley have also been on a study visit to Gran Canaria and have attended the World Travel Market Exhibition in London as part of their HND programme at Reid Kerr.

Students can enrol now for courses starting in August 2006. For more details about the Travel and Tourism courses on offer at Reid Kerr, please contact Student Services on 0800 052 7343.

Press Release: Tuesday 1 August 2006