WTM 2012 Discoveries: Online Travel Training

For years travel experts, news analysts, even marketing gurus have profession the necessity for travel pros to possess “digital savvy”, well one company is doing something about it. Look at OTT.

At WTM 2012 a company called Online Travel Training just broke out via announcing their site launch at this most important meeting event. The rebrand and worldwide online distribution of the world’s largest tourism and travel eLearning is significant for several reasons. OTT the new brand, still offers the full range of popular services such as competitions, fam trips & incentive, and especially skill and GDS training course. But a lot more now.

The easily navigable and crispy looking OTT website is as newsworthy as any, but the real meat behind this press bit is the range of offerings for training users, and training providers. The short lists are below.

Training recipients get:

• Their Personal Homepage – On login YOUR homepage shows training history and completed coures etc.
• My OTT – a brand new extended personal training dashboard
• Consolidated Training Record – ALL courses completed on TTG, Advantage, SeaWorld & future OTT-powered platforms show up in one place
• External training tracker – records non-OTT training events including other elearning provider & seminars
• Achievement Badges – gamification – rewards
• Bespoke Certificates – get branded certificates from training providers
• Integrated Ratings – feedback to training providers

Training providers get:

• Multi-language – Deliver & market eLearning in any language
• Audience controls – Specific training copy to specific types of users
• Global marketing: Tell the world’s agents about…..
• Extended registration data – request ABTA/IATA numbers, address, date of birth etc.
• Achievement Badges – gamification – rewards
• Easy creation – Simple course creation
• Bespoke Certificates – create bespoke, branded certificates for members
• Client Dashboard – extended management area allows for ‘deep-dive’ reporting etc
• Bespoke design – CCS (Cascading Style Sheet) integration
• Competition promotion – new homepage panel AND ‘live competition’ flags on course listings
• Featured courses – boost your eLearning via premium listings and banners

Managing Director Julia Feuell’s team has come out with a chic new platform from which to offer OTT’s advanced skills training, but the important value is what’s under the hood of the shiny new sports car. That would be some of the world’s best T & T training, but with better user tools. Did you ever wonder where all those support people get their expertise using Galileo, Sabre, Amadeus, Worldspan & Viewdata systems?

Aside the technicalities of such learning services, I am most impressed by OTT’s scope of operation – basically helping people learn about ANYTHING travel. Cruises to car rentals, I’m a bit surprised they don’t offer degrees for dedicated doormen.

Just taking Amadeus as one example, I found the “expert” course, a comprehensive training in the Amadeus GDS system, pretty dog gone cheap for what is entailed. Expert, for me, means hit the ground running at anybody’s computer terminal. 70 hours for £229.00. I may take the course just to evaluate it. For that the trainee gets:

• Airline Reservations (parts 1 & 2)
• Automatic Fares & Ticketing
• Car Hire
• Hotel Reservations
• Tour Reservations
• TIMATIC

Without doing a full sales pitch for OTT here, I do suggest readers interested visit this new site, then call the company for more specifics. Any travel pro out there can benefit from what is a super comprehensive store for learning. The client list of OTT does not lie. From Affordable Car Hire to Warner Leisure Hotels and Wendy Wu Tours, the eLearning course of OTT have been around the globe a few times.

Whether your company is looking for a place online to host your eLearning programs, or if you are just out of school looking for a job in hospitality, there’s a leg up offered via this new website. As branding goes? My experience as a PR tells me OTT has a good public relations and marketing arm. Oh! If I’m right that would be Eva Cabanach, head of OTT’s marketing guru. I wonder if she has anything to do with this cool Facebook aspect?

A final note, you can tell a lot about a company that offers their team’s faces and contacts people. Think about that for a second, then visit these guys. Heck, Tweet the boss even @Julia_Feuell – I am a social media guru, ya know?