Last week The Travel Institute published the 9^th edition of its Travel Career Development textbook. Through the years I’ve been involved in several revisions and can attest to all the researching, writing, re-writing, reviewing, editing, proofreading, indexing, graphic design and other steps in production that it takes to bring a new book like this to fruition. It’s quite a process! Kudos to industry veteran Marty Sarbey de Souto, CTC, for all the work she did for this current edition.

Since the first edition was published more than 40 years ago, it’s continued to be the leading textbook used in travel schools that have introductory travel/tourism courses. And although there are fewer travel schools today than there were 30-40 years ago, sales continue to flourish both to travel schools and travel agencies who have in-house training programs.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining the online discussion board for a travel school in California where students had the opportunity to ask me travel-related questions. I was really impressed with the quality of the questions plus the variety of the student’s career goals.

The specialty areas they were interested pursuing included selling golf packages; cultural tourism in Europe and Asia; cruises; New Zealand; inbound tourists; and eco adventure. Questions that were posted included: “When interviewing for a position how do I stand out from others vying for the same position?” plus “Would you suggest focusing on a specific skills set, marketing, social media, or what area? There’s so much out there to learn!”

All in all, the comments and questions reinforced the fact that there are positive signs that more and more talented people are ready to make careers in travel and tourism. We’re happy that our textbook, Travel Career Development, has played a small role in their education.

A new edition of our companion textbook, Exploring the World, was published last year. Click here to read more about Travel Career Development. If you are an instructor in a travel school interested in obtaining an inspection copy of the book, please visit the travel educator page on our website.