Online Courses and Training for Tourism Professionals

Learn how TrainingAid built up their online courses and skills building opportunities for tourism professionals.

We asked Ayako Ezaki a bit about TrainingAid and how it came to be. While based in Hamburg, Germany, their community is primarily online and international. Ayako is in charge of knowledge management and communications at TrainingAid and works with travel and tourism industry leaders and experts to help provide quality learning and professional development opportunities.

At the Travel Massive event hosted during the Social Media Week Hamburg in February.

Is there a unique story of how it came to be?

We officially launched TrainingAid in 2013. The interesting thing, looking back, is that we’ve witnessed tremendous change in the e-learning landscape during these years, not just in terms of advances in learning-related technologies, but also the general level of awareness and interest in using online tools as part of professional development opportunities has dramatically increased in this relatively short span of time. Some of us may remember the very early days of “e-learning” when it just meant web pages with PDF download links. Online learning today represents a very different – much more sophisticated and diverse – set of approaches to learning which, when done well, can really be a powerful tool to support skills development. 

A production day at TrainingAid.

What gap did you find in the travel industry that inspired you to create it?  

I’ve come to believe that the best way to improve knowledge is to learn from the experiences and lessons of experts. For many years I’ve been involved in the fields of ecotourism and sustainable tourism. I think that there’s definitely room for improvement when it comes to how different tourism industry players work together to create practical solutions and tangible results. Helping to ensure the sound development healthy growth of our industry is everyone’s business, regardless of which sector we’re in. And I believe that facilitating knowledge sharing is a key part of the solution.

How is your brand changing the future of the industry or helping to make travel better?

Focusing on professional skills development through TrainingAid is a small way to give back to the industry that has given me so many opportunities, and also to ‘pay it forward’ as I hope that investing in people’s potential through knowledge sharing and skill building will contribute positively to the future of our industry.

Sometimes, we also get to enjoy learning and sharing off-line and out and about. This photo is from a meeting/workshop in Ukraine last year, as part of our work with the Black Sea Sustainable Rural Tourism Program.

Is your brand doing something cool and innovative this year?

Yes! We’re launching a new addition to our online course offerings that will help tourism industry professionals access knowledge and practice skills in a productive and efficient manner. In a nutshell, our 4-Week Courses combine the convenience of online, on-demand learning with the benefits of interactive people-focused learning, with an emphasis on tangible and applicable outcomes. We’d love to explore ideas to collaborate with industry experts in the Travel Massive’s global community. Please do get in touch!

Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. Connect with Ayako Ezaki and TrainingAid on Travel Massive!