Open-air sightseeing tram with a locomotive-style engine parked on a sunny street, a tour product covered in travel industry training

Travel Industry Training From Suppliers

What tour operators, hotel companies, resorts and the airline world teach the advisors who sell them.

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Destination courses teach the place. Supplier academies teach the product: how a tour runs, what a resort includes, how a hotel brand differs from its sister brands, and how to book it correctly. This is the travel industry training that prevents the mistakes clients remember.

Tour Operator Training

Escorted and guided tours are complicated products: pace, group size, hotel location, included meals and optional excursions all change the trip. The operators know this and train for it.

TTC Agent Academy

The Travel Corporation’s TTC Agent Academy uses one eLearning registration for its brands. Named courses include the Trafalgar Master Class, Insight Specialist, Luxury Gold Masterclass and Brendan’s Celtic Classroom, with courses for other brands in the family.

Collette University

Collette places its training, Collette University, inside Collette’s travel advisor portal, alongside the tools advisors use to book its tours.

Hotel and Resort Training

Hotel companies tend to link training to agent benefits, which makes the courses worth finishing.

Marriott Hotel Excellence! is Marriott’s training program for advisors. Marriott describes it as the route to its Fam-Tastic rates and preferred agency status.
Wyndham Wise is Wyndham’s online course; Wyndham restricts its personal travel rate for agents to graduates.
Sandals and Beaches offer online certification training through the Sandals travel agent portal.
Universal publishes its UNIVERSALANDU training on the Universal Partner Community site.

Resort courses are especially useful for all-inclusive sales, where the difference between two properties is often in room categories, dining reservations, age policies and what “included” actually covers. Theme park courses do the same for ticket types and park logistics.

Supplier incentives tied to training are covered on our sister site Travel Agent Incentives.

Air and Distribution Training

Air is the part of travel industry training most new advisors skip and later regret. IATA Training’s Foundation in Travel and Tourism Diploma covers the fundamentals of travel and tourism, and IATA publishes versions tied to the Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport+ reservation systems for people who will work in a global distribution system. If your business will issue airline tickets, accreditation matters too: IATAN is the U.S. body that accredits travel sellers and issues the joint IATA/IATAN ID card.

How to Use Supplier Training Well

Train on the suppliers you will actually sell. A course for a brand you never book teaches little you can use.
Keep a one-page cheat sheet per supplier: who it suits, what is included, deposit and cancellation basics, and how to book.
Re-take updates. Operators refresh products every season and the course is the quickest way to catch changes.
Pair a supplier course with a destination course for the same region, so you know both the place and the trip.

Find suppliers to train with in the Official Travel Industry Directory. Cruise lines run their own academies; Cruise Agent University maps them.

Train, Then Sell

Supplier academies teach the product. A home-based travel business gives you the booking tools and support to sell it.

Become a Travel Agent