I\u2019ve just got back from a lovely week away with my husband and daughter and, for the first time, I went \u2018all inclusive\u2019.\u00a0 Before I decided to add on this additional sum of money to my \u2018last minute\u2019 package holiday deal (I kept delaying booking something because everywhere in Europe seemed to be either on fire or under 10 feet of water \u2026 unfortunately it would seem that we are succeeding in destroying the world) I went through a typical Sarah Lethbridge decision-making process in my mind. Should I go \u2018all inclusive\u2019 or not?<\/p>\n
*middle class privilege alert*<\/p>\n
Exasperated at the state of the world and desperate to bury my head in the sand for a week (whilst of course, adding to the climate crisis ourselves) I plumped for \u2018All Inclusive\u2019 in an attempt to see what the fuss was all about whilst being desperate to be free of \u2018the mental load<\/a>\u2019. Surely \u2018all inclusive\u2019 removes layer upon layer of tedious domestic decision making from my holiday experience?<\/p>\n I\u2019m tired of thinking. Sign me up.<\/p>\n Upon arrival at the resort, we were greeted with Cava (major result) and told to sit down whilst we are taken through the check in process. A nice lady came to sit down with us and talk to us about the hotel amenities. Surrounded by lilies and velvet furnishings, it felt odd as she reached over to each of us to \u2018brand us\u2019 with the \u2018all inclusive\u2019 wristbands that would entitle the relentless food and drink for the entirety of our stay. Erm, can we pretend we are in some exotic roofbar terrace with champagne and a complementary fruit platter for slightly longer before you send me crashing back down to earth with memories of festival toilets please?<\/p>\n Therein began my tense \u2018all inclusive\u2019 service experience.<\/p>\n Things I don\u2019t like about \u201cAll Inclusive\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, I\u2019m afraid, it would seem I am too snooty, germophobic and have just enough of a social conscience to become an \u2018all inclusive\u2019 convert.<\/p>\n It wasn’t all bad though obviously:<\/p>\n As ever, I write these blogs to attempt to ruminate on some element of the business world and this experience has really made me think about pricing, particularly pricing relating to short and flexible courses offered at Cardiff. Some of you might remember that I have a new role as the Academic Partner for Flexible Learning where we\u2019re working together to enable little and often, whenever you want it, stackable learning. The last few weeks have mainly been focusing on how we can enable automated modular billing so that a student can pick a module of study in Clinical Optometry and the student information management system generate a bill just for the module that they studied.\u00a0 Thank GOD for Chris Taylor and his IT team because achieving this is A LOT more difficult than it sounds because payments in University are organised at the programme level. Annual instalments are paid by the cost of the programme divided by 3 as an individual, by 1 if you are a company sponsoring a student.\u00a0 Payments are made \u2018down\u2019 as a divisible number of a total programme cost. What we are seeking to do is to organise payments \u2018up\u2019 to enable the ability to stack different nuggets of learning and to hopefully, one day, enable students to pick a suite of different modules from different parts of the University. Critically of course, all of this needs to happen automatically when students enrol.<\/p>\n\n
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