Shout out: Cherie Anderson, tour trainer extraordinaire

Posted by De Tour - Matt Smith

I chatted last week with Cherie Anderson, who offers a well-respected training in tour management. She’s worked for over 20 years as a tour director and cruise director, and has been training tour directors since 1993. I learned the business from her. If you’re interested in this work, I’d recommend her course.

About the training: Cherie covers procedures really clearly. It’s everything from how to check a group in and out of the hotel, to how you can assign seating in a bus to prevent conflict, and even what to do if someone dies. Really thorough, practical, well-organized and common-sense.

She also talks about the attitude and qualities that make a tour director successful. And she offers stories to illustrate the challenges tour directors can face. So her training wasn’t just a bunch of checklists, what to do when. It also helped me understand what matters when you’re running a tour and how to think about things.

Cherie measures her success as a trainer by how many of her students get hired. Her course includes information about the industry and companies she recommends applying to. She has relationships with many of them, so mentioning you’ve had her training actually means something to them. She also sends out email bulletins to announce open positions she hears about. For example, I got an email last week about a company she’s helping to recruit tour directors. Otherwise, I’d never have known about the positions they’re trying to fill.

The last thing I’ll mention is, Cherie’s a sweetheart and truly invested in her students. She actually had a career as a teacher before becoming a professional tour director. It shows – both in how well she presents information and in how she engages students. While chatting with her last week, I realized I’d recommend her to anyone… and that’s when I decided to give her this shout out!

To learn more, check out her website: http://www.tourtraining.com/

Matt's Website:  http://www.godetour.com/blog/2012/09/shout-out-cherie-anderson-tour-trainer-extraordinaire/

Growth in US tourism enhances International tourism industry prospects!

The international tourism market along with the Asian inbound tourism experiences a steep upsurge in the recent times as the fiscal value of dollar and the promotion of global tourism helps the Americans to plan their leisure and business trips comfortably. The Asian destinations including, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and Australia are some of the most sought after destinations as per the recent reports of the US travel association. Moreover, states like New York, California are providing a lot of job opportunities related to the tourism industry. The headlines of the international tourism news is definitely serving a world of good for travel industry experts and research associates of global tour operators in the world.

The travel and tourism sector grew at an annualized rate of 6.8 percent in the first three months of 2013. In the same period, the U.S. economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.4 percent, according to the US department of commerce, Bureau of economic analysis. Not only is the U.S. travel and tourism industry growing more than three times as fast as the rest of the economy, it’s doing so despite a slowing in growth in prices. Moreover, the travel and tourism industry is also hiring people at a much faster rate than other sectors of the U.S. economy. Employment in this sector grew 2.3 percent in the first quarter of 2013, 0.4 percentage points faster than the pace at which the rest of the U.S. economy added jobs — 1.9 percent.

Passenger flights, which grew 19 percent in the first quarter of 2013, were the biggest contributor to the increased spending in the travel and tourism sector. Other transportation-related industries, like car rentals, also saw increased spending. However, growth in spending in restaurants, bars and hotels slowed down.

 The rise in US tourism has also augmented a lot of local businesses in the Asian countries. Similarly, the travel trends and jobs related to the tourism industry are showing new lights of human resources and promote tourism worldwide. Recently, the state’s tourism industry is busy with job creation machine that cannot be outsourced or replaced by technology, said Caroline Beteta, CEO of Visit California, in response to an employment report that showed tourism led the state in new jobs.

“California’s travel and tourism industry is a leading economic engine for the state. As the industry continues to grow it’s no surprise that the largest component of the travel and tourism industry – leisure and hospitality – has recently added 9,000 new jobs, more than any other industry,” Beteta said, in a release.

Read the full article:

http://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/us-tourism-enhances-international-tourism-market-growth/