On November 22nd, students from 9th and 10th grade visited LingKong SOHO, where the headquarters of Trip.com are located. Trip.com, previously known as CTrip, is an online travel booking company that was founded in 1999. The company provides a platform for hotel booking, flight booking, ticket reservation, and other booking related services. Throughout the job shadowing experience, students were able to learn about and participate in specific divisions of the company.

After a half-hour bus ride from school, students arrived at SOHO plaza. The visit started with a presentation given by three female managers, who would be the mentors in the following activity. They represent three different divisions: CSC international, the domestic customer support center, and the IT department. Every student was supposed to select one division from these three. They would then have the opportunity to visit that specific department for a more detailed observation later on.

In the last hour of the visit, students were separated into groups based on the selections they made in the presentation. They were taken to each department to view how specialists in each division work every day. They were surprised by how the company has branches scattered all around the world. The manager told them several basic pieces of knowledge about the respective department. She took them to a training office where new employees were watching a lecture on basic information on hotel booking. Everything the lecturer said was new to them; nonetheless, they enjoyed their time listening to the presentation.

After the tour, students were fascinated by how Trip.com has become so globalized and influential in everyday life. Overall, this was an extraordinary event for all the students who participated in this job shadowing. They learned a lot of information that is normally not taught in school. It was a highly beneficial event, allowing the students to understand how things they learned in school can be applied in their future professional fields.

(Written by Max Jung Pictured by Yu Zhen and Employees from CTrip.com Supervised by Xie Junyu)