Every wondered how your travel agent seems to accrue such an exhaustive knowledge of every destination in the world? It doesn’t matter where you want to go or what you want to see they will have been there and done it before – or at least they’ll say they have. The secret behind their apparent super human level of knowledge is the huge strides made recently in travel training.
Travel training is the process by which any professional within the industry quickly gains comprehensive knowledge of destinations and different parts of the business. They can choose from a range of different courses and modules to learn anything they need to know.
For example, let’s say you want to go to Australia. Depending on what you need you can find a course to suit you. It won’t just be a bland digest of basic information – the kind you can easily glean off the net. It’ll be specifically targeted at what they need. The course can tell them about the country, its nature, its people and attractions. It can help the agent convey to the customer the true experience of heading down under. It can offer business tips and advice on the best way to sell the destination.
The result is a win win for all concerned. The customer gets added service value, the agent received more commission and the travel training provider collects another cheque. Everyone’s happy.
But is this the kind of thing we really want to see in our world. We live in an age of instant information. Thanks to the marvel of Google and other search engines everyone can become an apparent expert on any subject in the world. Want to know about the riches of Egypt? Give me ten minutes and access to a computer and I can tell you everything you need to know.
The result is an end to learning replaced by the ability to parrot facts and figures. For instance, I recently spoke to a journalist who shall for his own sake remain nameless. He’d just written a detailed travel guide to Portugal. The only problem was he’d never been. No matter – a few quick scans of the web and he was up to speed. I wonder if I’ll ever trust a travel article again.
So travel training doesn’t give instant knowledge, but it offers enough for the agent to do his or her job more effectively and can you really quibble with that?
