My Name is Elis. Since I was a teenager I have been dreaming of visiting New Zealand. After I went to England when I was 19 and started Tourism and Hospitality Management course at London South Bank University, this dream began to look more achievable.

When we were told by our course director that for our work placement we can go anywhere we want, I knew straight away where I wanted to go.

I was trying hard to find a job in NZ myself, by emailing my CV to hundreds and hundreds tourism companies based in New Zealand. Most of them didn’t reply back. If they did, they always replied with the same response:

“We are sorry but we can’t tell at the moment if we can employ you later on this year because of this hard economic climate we are in now”.

Therefore, in the middle of summer I finally decided to contact Intern Options because I still didn’t have my placement.

It took about two months till I got the so awaited email from Jon, saying I will be working for a tourism attraction in Rotorua from the beginning of November. I was so happy and couldn’t believe it till I actually got here.

Now I’ve been working in Rotorua for about two and half months already and I absolutely love it. NZ is even much better than I expected, I’m really stunned by its beauty. Rotorua is nice, relaxed town by the lake, not too busy or quiet either, just great.

I’m being very honest to say that this placement is the best workplace I’ve ever been a part of. All the staff the are very friendly and helpful and we always joke that we are more like family there. The job is awesome, quite challenging and busy at the moment, because of the summer period we are in at the moment, but that’s exactly how it should be. It took me a while to get used to night shifts but it’s all good now.

I’m flat sharing with Carl one of my colleagues from work and its great. We get on very well and if we are lucky and get the same days off we always go somewhere. We have just come back from the trip to very north of New Zealand, Cape Reinga. It was awesome.

This way I would love to thank you to Jon and all his team for being so helpful and giving me the chance to work in such a great place. Also many thanks to Carl who is making my stay here so nice and exciting.

If you’re interested in a Tourism Internship like Elis’s in Queenstown, Auckland, Wellington, Rotorua in New Zealand, check out the Tourism Internships page for more information.