An NYU freshman is spending thousands of dollars for weekend getaways to sunny Florida, but it isn’t what you think.
The college student is paying the massive travel price tag to spend his weekends working rather than lounging on the beach.
Big Apple college kid Vincent Campanaro flies to Florida every weekend for an internship at The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, which he estimated will cost him more than $10,000 in travel expenses once the six-month gig comes to an end next month.
“It’s about $500 a week, which flying back and forth to Naples, that’s really penny-pinching because Naples is pretty expensive as I’m sure you probably know,” he said on Varney & Co. on Fox Business last week.
“But it’s not easy,” Campanaro noted. “Actually, there have been times where I had to sleep at the airport or just book a completely different flight because my flight price increased.”
He reportedly flies out of New York once his classes end Friday at 12:15 p.m. and gets back to his college dorm Sunday after flying out of Florida around 9 p.m.
He explained he was forced to turn to the Sunshine State because finding an internship in the hospitality field can be cutthroat.
“The internship market in general is incredibly competitive right now. So you’ve got people applying with, say, perfect test scores, perfect GPA, everything, and they send 200 applications in, they don’t get a single offer,” he said on Fox Business.
Campanaro, who is a dual major at NYU, though not in hospitality, admitted he doesn’t yet have the credentials compared to older students who have more skills to nab a closer internship.
“It’s basically luck of the draw,” the young man said. “I could have applied to every single internship in the entire country and not gotten a single one in New York, so it’s just a complete coincidence.”
He added, “Freshmen do not intern at hotels, really.”
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Despite the exhaustive and expensive travel from school to internship and back again, Campanaro said he’s happy he pursued the unusual arrangement with one month to go in his internship.
“I’ve learned so much just about the Ritz-Carlton philosophy and customer centricity, all of that, and just sort of anticipating the needs and wants of your guests,” he said on Varney & Co.
In an essay he wrote for Business Insider, he shook off questions about how he manages the workload and travel in order to make the paid internship work. It involves studying as he’s in the middle of travel, he noted.
“I don’t see all of this as work but as the pursuit of my passions. Each task I embark on is driven by sincere interest and ambition, making every day an opportunity for discovery, learning, and personal growth,” he said.
