Blog homeIf you phone us to talk about our services there is a high chance that you will come through to me (I don’t hide behind layers of middle management!). Yesterday someone called from Eastern Europe and wanted to talk about travel reservation systems.
Normally in these calls I have to do a very quick “triage” as to whether they are going to be suitable for our system. However, in this request, the conversation went slightly differently.
In summary, this group are looking for a reservation system that can be used within a college where they are teaching travel and tourism. Part of the course is structured around learning about reservation systems.
They are looking for a fully functional system - including full GDS connectivity….. however I know that most systems on the market are out of the budget of a school looking for a system to teach with. That is probably why they were talking to me!
What should people be learning at college?
A long time ago I used to be involved with IT training. My golden rule at the time was that you should teach the concepts behind what software does - rather than “learning a piece of software”.
For example, when teaching wordprocessing, it is best to teach what a font is, what italics are etc…. rather than how, in Microsoft Word, to change the font to Arial or Times New Roman. Obviously you need to cover some “how” topics…. but the focus is on the “this is possible”… Then, when a student is faced with a different wordprocessing system, they know they should be able to change font…. and just need to find the right menu.
If I teach people about the web I prefer to teach about usability and how to make business decisions rather than what HTML is.
My own experience
7 years ago I had a very enjoyable 5 days in the South coast of France - at Amadeus’s office there. I spent 5 days learning about how their GDS works, the command line interface and how to integrate it with various web based systems they have. However, the problem is, I have forgotten 90% of what I learnt.
The mistake is that I learnt things like what the command for a hotel availability check is or how to call up a PNR etc. Having never used any of that knowledge in practice it has gone out of my head. At least I can reassure myself it was in my head once!
What would I teach to a student learning about reservation systems at college?
An idea that I suggested to the teacher who called me was that each student, as a project, gets to set up their own fictitious tour operator company on their own installation of a reservation system. This will force them to think about:
- Structuring dates, prices & availability
- Enquiry handling
- Taking new bookings (both online and staff made)
- Tailor made trips
- Configuring suppliers
- Configuring travel agent commission settings
- Configuring cost & sale ledger
I thought that this would give them a great background in what a reservation system is (and does) - and regardless of where that student goes to work for in travel - they would benefit from having this understanding. This is a course that I would quite fancy running!
Anyway, I am sure I am completely reinventing the wheel here….. but there are lots of travel and tourism courses out there…. what do they all do for teaching about reservation systems? Anyone know?
(Apart from standard GDS courses which are interesting, but are more about flights than people selling tours. Besides, the GDS courses don’t get into the interesting topics of how to structure your travel products or how to deal with enquiries)
Oh, if you have a perfect solution, I will send it to the teacher as I have their email address
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Hey Alex…
You can give that teacher my email address and I can take it forward. We have recently launched our Education Initiative in india and have already signed up for 3500 students for the year and have fixed their placements as well…
This is just the launch and once we are completly out on the market, we will be 10 times of this.
Rajat
Hi Rajat,
OK - I have sent the teacher your email address !
Thanks. Alex
Dear Alex,
In general I agree with you. Schools/colleges wanting to teach GDS when choosing a system think about the following: Altough ‘real’ systems have ALL the city-pairs, ALL the fares and fare-notes, they change all the time. This means that a teacher never can make exercises, because the outcome will always be unpredictable: availabilites and fares change by the second. Also there is the problem of security: it won’t be the first time that a college books a complete 747 on a given day!
So an e-learning system together with a simulation offers the best of both worlds: the systematic instruction of the e-learning system, combined with the simulation with ready made exercises.
Take a look (and the teacher too, please) at www.mundus.com for some info about the Mundus system (to be honest I am their distributor).