Survey reveals agents respond favourably to eLearning courses

The results from a global survey entitled ?eLearning Courses on Tourism Destinations: Travel Agents? Perceptions? were recently announced and found that 81% of the 1,004 agents surveyed undertook online training to build their product knowledge, and that 42% of travel agents stated they had taken the training to respond to their clients? needs or requests. The results from a global survey entitled ?eLearning Courses on Tourism Destinations: Travel Agents? Perceptions? were recently announced and found that 81% of the 1,004 agents surveyed undertook online training to build their product knowledge, and that 42% of travel agents stated they had taken the training to respond to their clients? needs or requests.

The independent study also found that overall agents were highly positive about their previous online training experience.

Results from the survey by the Universit? della Svizzera italiana (University of Lugano, Switzerland) found that 67% of agents have sold a destination package off the back of taking an online training course, and 53% feel confident about selling a destination after they have completed a course.

Tourism Australia?s Aussie Specialist Programme was ranked as the top course, followed by Dubai, the Caribbean, Mauritius and Malta.

The report also showed that agents combine eLearning with offline platforms, the most popular being fam trips (53%); reading books and magazines (45%); attending roadshows or conferences

(35%) and following specialised blogs, websites or mailing lists (32%).

Operations director of Online Travel Training, Bruce Martin, said: ?E-learning has seen huge growth in the last few years with ever more agents engaging with online product courses. In 2011 alone, we have seen more than 50,000 courses completed and nearly a quarter of a million individual training taken via the Website.?

The report can be downloaded from www.elearning4tourism.com