A kick in the groin. From myself

So, a realization hit me this week, and hit me hard. And it was a low blow, at that.

I have worked in Incoming Tourism now for just over 7 years, about two-thirds of that time as a tour operator, and the rest in Marketing and Sales. I enjoy both aspects of the work, and while I concede that my natural skills are more in the direction of the Marketing and Sales side of the business, I also really enjoy the operations side.

To give a working “definition” of what I’m talking about:

A Tour Operator is responsible for all of the land arranging for tours of groups, families, individuals, etc. that come into Israel. From meeting and assistance immediately after passport control at the airport through luggage claim until they return to the airport (and have meeting and assistance again to check their luggage and go through passport control). It is arranging the guide, bus, hotels, sites, meals, transfers, domestic flights within Israel, and whatever else is necessary (and requested) to make the trip the best it can possibly be. Some families just need us to arrange hotels and transfers for them, others request the full package. A Tour Operator is in charge of all of the logistics involved in the tour, and is usually very much behind the scenes. As far as the tourists are concerned, more often than not the operator doesn’t even exist. All of the “credit” goes to the tour agency abroad that arranged the trip and to the tour guide that is with the family or group throughout.

Most of the Incoming Tourism companies in Israel, as far as I know, do not work “directly” with the travelers. The clients are the travel agencies around the world whom people turn to for the trips. The agency in turn has its land operator (for example, my company) that makes all of the arrangements. The travelers pay their agency, the agency pays the land operator, and everybody is happy.

And most operators are behind the scenes, interfacing with the travel agency abroad and doing all of the grunt work, unbeknownst to the travelers themselves.

The Marketing & Sales side is different. Rather than getting involved in the detailed operation of each individual family or group, the Marketing people are responsible for getting the tour agencies abroad to choose them as their land operator. They do this by establishing and maintaining contact with agencies around the world, they create new and exciting programs that the agencies will want to try selling to their clientele, and they offer an initial cost proposal either for one of the new programs that they’ve created or for a specific itinerary requested by the agency. The Marketing staff nurtures a relationship with the agencies until they reach the point when the file (or files) can go into Operations and the tourists can start coming.

Both aspects of the business are crucial to a company’s success, and both aspects are very interesting, challenging, fun and fulfilling. And both are things which I’ve personally enjoyed working.

When I was first moved at my previous job from Operations into Marketing & Sales, I understood the rationale behind it – I am good at writing programs and itineraries, strong at communication with potential clients, and I personally have a successful background in sales. So it made a lot of sense.

But it also hurt me – because there was an element of my being a decent tour operator, but not a good one, or even a good one but not a great one. And I wanted to see myself as having succeeded in Operations.

My manager in Operations at that job, who had been one of the instrumental forces in moving me into Marketing had told me (and I honestly respect the way that she puts it all “on the table”) that I really should not be in Operations. She said that my strengths don’t lie in that direction (as opposed to the Marketing and Sales, which she claims is absolutely where my strengths are), and that working in operations – because I drive myself so crazy over things when they fall through the cracks – is not healthy for me.

I respect her opinion, and I have always seen her as a friend, but this still upset me a great deal. So I dealt with the disappointment, and threw myself into the Sales & Marketing side of things, which I enjoyed very much (despite having a very difficult boss – he is an absolutely brilliant VP of Marketing, but our personal chemistry made for some “interesting” days there…). When I left the company, this boss told me that despite our personal differences, my leaving did not make him happy.

I started at my current company as an operator, with the understanding that they would also want me working some of the time with the Director of Marketing & Sales.

So far so good. I was doing operations, and doing some Marketing stuff and life was good.

Then we got a new General Manager of Incoming (in short, a new boss for me) – it was my friend (and I am not using that word sarcastically or ironically) from my previous company – the Manager of Operations that feels that I’m really not cut out for operations.

She allowed me to continue the handful of files that I had already in motion, but decided that she really wanted to have me work full-time here with the Director of Marketing and Sales (which is also under her supervision).

It was on the one hand disappointing, because I do enjoy Operations, on the other hand reasonable because I also like Marketing (and I get along with the Marketing boss here much better than with the one at my previous job), and on the other hand (don’t ask how I have 3 hands – you really don’t want to know…) not at all surprising, given how this manager feels about me as a tour operator.

So, this week the last group that I will be operating arrived in Israel. I was so careful to go over everything with the proverbial “fine toothed comb” – checking every reservation 4 and 5 times, comparing it all to the itinerary, and cross-referencing it all with the original proposal sent to this agent a year ago (before I was even at this company). And I was ready to go out with a proverbial “bang”.

But you know what they say – the best laid plans, and all that crap….

In short, I screwed something up. In a huge way. And the worst thing about it is that was in one simple email which I sent 6 months ago. Without going into details, I had booked one set of hotels (nice, serviceable 4-star hotels) but accidentally gave the agent names of more luxurious 5-star hotels that the group would be staying (the names are very similar, so it's not as unthinkable a mistake as you might imagine, but still...)

So when the group arrived a couple of nights ago and they were brought to the 4-star hotel which I had booked for them, they nearly mutinied in the lobby that this was not what the agent (who is accompanying this group as the tour leader) had promised them.

My manager and I have spent the last 2 days patching things up with the group and with the agent, and by the end of the day tomorrow, I think (and sincerely hope) that everything will be squared away.

There is a Hebrew expression, ”ha’asimon nafal”, which translates “The token has fallen” (this expression dates back to 30 or so years ago and is a reference to the old public phones that Israel used to have. Rather than using coins, as phones in America and other places did, Israeli public phones used tokens, or asimonim, and the caller would put a few of these tokens in the phone, and a token would “fall through” every couple of minutes). So when we say ”ha’asimon nafal”, we mean that we finally get it. An idea that is obvious to everyone around us and their grandmother has finally become clear to us as well.

This week, my ”asimon" finally fell. I finally understood why I should be in Marketing and Sales and not in Operations. I love working Operations, but the time has come for me to face the reality that it isn’t what I should be doing in the world of tourism. I hate facing this reality. I hate even more that something that I should have seen and understood a long time ago, something that was so clear to so many people close to me whose opinions I respect, took me this long to finally “get”.

I know that in the long run, all will be well. My job is not in danger (for some reason) and I have proven myself – to my colleagues and bosses as well as to myself – to be very good at what I do in the Marketing & Sales department, so I have no reason to doubt that in the new role which I will now be taking on full-time, I’ll do just fine.

But I still can’t shake the disappointment in myself, and the, I guess embarrassment in not having have seen in myself what was so obvious to those around me. And I’m not sure what pisses me off more – that I’m not as good an operator as I want to be and have tried to be, or that I was so self-deluded about it for so long.

There’s no shame in recognizing where one’s strengths lie, and where they don't. But there is something wrong in not seeing what we are and what we are not.

These past couple of days, I finally started seeing a part what I really am. And what I’m not.