Marketing managers in the Travel Industry have a tough job. They need to get the message out to as many travel agents in the industry as possible within a tight budget.
Increasingly the trend now is to take travel training online. Here we look at the 10 reasons why this is happening:

1. Reaches more people

The traditional method employed by destination marketing companies is to organise road shows where they would hire a room in a town and invite all the local travel agents to come along for a presentation with food & drink.

This is a tried and tested approach and is certainly effective in getting the message across but of course it relies upon the agents actually being available and willing to attend - sometimes giving up their evening. Also unlike the internet, road shows cannot be held in every town so people will always be missed.

2. More cost effective

Cost is always a key element to consider and road shows can be expensive in relation to online training. Once room hire, prizes, food, drink & transport is considered a Roadshow event might cost 500 pounds-1000 each, per town... The cost of an online travel training course is significantly less to reach the same or more agents.

3. If you like that, you'll like this

The travel industry has experienced a huge amount of mergers in recent years with holding companies owning several unrelated companies. By taking travel training online companies are able to cross-promote products and services.

4. Connect with students & non-agents

Many travel students are the agents of the future so it makes sense to connect with them and provide them with the chance to learn about their product. In addition, there are benefits from the public taking training courses too as it would engage them with the product and encourage them to purchase a holiday.

5. Never gets out of date

As the training is online the copy never gets out of date. Companies can easily update the copy in a cost effective way and keep things fresh. This is not the case for brochures and exhibition stands.

6. Less time required to manage - in the end!

The initial set up of training can be time consuming and bears consideration for anyone considering this route. However, there are significant benefits in the long run from this initial investment.

Probably the best way to approach training set-up is to work backwards. Companies need to think 'what are the 10 key things that we want to get across to travel agents'. You can then work backwards from there and create the right type of copy to get those 10 messages across. Once this is all set up, the training can run itself with minimal running costs.

7. Appear Web-savvy

Having an online travel presence is very 'now' and any company embracing this approach will no doubt gain extra kudos in the industry.

8. Supports flexible working

There is an increasing trend for home working in the travel industry via companies such as travel counsellors. Online training fits this model perfectly and allows home workers to keep up to date with product knowledge even though they no longer work in a high street agency.

9. Broadband

Online training at home would have been a painfully slow experience a few years ago. However, more people have broadband at home, which makes it possible to have an attractive training product with colourful branding and supporting photos.

10. Fastest way to market

Online travel training is the fastest method of getting the message across to agents. If a tourist board has a new attraction it wants to promote, they can easily add a module to the course. They can also e-shot the database to invite them to take the course to learn about the product. This coupled with maybe a free gift promotion is a great way to get the message across.