Every week brings news of a travel agent training program or educational tool that will join the scores of others available to agents interested in gaining more travel sales and supplier expertise. However, the travel industry lacks one central resource for access to them all.
CCRA Travel Solutions hopes to remedy that with the debut of CCRA University, an online hub designed for agents to find supplier-sponsored training and education.
According to Dic Marxen, president and CEO of CCRA Travel Solutions, the company “decided to add CCRA University to our existing online travel agent tools and training resources because we saw an opportunity to create a central hub where agents can go to discover what 'best in class' suppliers offer in the way of ongoing industry learning, product knowledge and professional expertise.”
The site was recently launched with only a few hotel suppliers participating, but CCRA hopes to build on that and feature learning modules, certification programs, webinars and rewards programs from many more travel companies.
CCRA “will be actively promoting participation to hotel companies and chains that have a travel agent program; however, we plan to engage a wide variety of other travel suppliers that offer agent exclusive programs,” Marxen said.
“We anticipate that suppliers will also continue to expand their program offerings as they draw more and more agent participation from this new online resource. Lastly, we hope the CCRAU will alert suppliers with no agent education or training programs currently in place to the value of such an opportunity.”
The site also includes the CCRA Online Hotel Directory, a CCRA Reference Guide with currency conversion charts and other information, a CCRA Travel Agent Blog with contests for agents to win prizes each month and a section on CCRA Weekly Training Webinars.
Suppliers, destinations and other companies interested in promoting their agent education information on CCRAU may contact Tiffany Topcik, vice president of CCRA’s Hotel Partner Solutions, at [email protected].
Click here for the company's new online education resource.