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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Big Success in the Big Apple!

What a weekend! Our group of Tour Pros who attended USA Tour Pros first NYC FAM trip and NYC Sightseeing Guide License Study Session were a wonderful blend of long-time professionals and newly-trained Tour Pros. The enthusiasm for all was palpable throughout our fur days together and the weather certainly cooperated with our event. And, it was heartening to see that our event, planned first and then unceremoniously trumped just two weeks before by another individual, was the superior of the two options for NYC training. When a local angle is needed to teach out-of-towners about moving a group in NYC, you need to rely on someone who lives there. Not a flatlander.

As of this morning, 20 out of 20 of our participants had passed the 150-question Sightseeing Guide License exam with an average score of 131. A full 90% had earned the coveted gold-star for scoring 120 or higher. Every member of the exam group checked-in following their test for a cordial de-briefing of their experience which we will utilize to teach our next group of FAM trip/Study Session participants even better. The superb assistance of Alice Devereaux and Sheryl Emmett, along with the support of the industry-leading Tour Operator USA Student Travel, and their Vice President Pat Neimeyer in particular, was what we needed to accomplish our success.

How did we deliver a bette value for our participants? We used a world-class hotel in the heart of Times Square while the other folks made their commute from New Jersey’s largest city, Newark, some 15 miles from midtown. We offered a guided 5-hour interactive city tour while the other group was issued a pass to the double-decker city tour company’s bus, with nary a chance to stop for any logistical training around the city. We developed a full 55-page NYC Training Guide that will become the industry standard. We offered a 250-topic NYC Study Pack to help our participants narrow down their studying to what we believe the exam would cover. We spent a full eight hours touring the city by Subway and foot one day just to clearly demonstrate how it is done. And we will follow up with a 220-picture CD to all participants (with full descriptions) for every member of the event. And all the while every one of our participants were covered under USA Student Travel’s generous travel insurance plan.

And now we are in the planning stage to take on Washington, DC, Boston, and San Francisco. Late this afternoon we were even in preliminary discussions about hosting a Hawaii event next winter, and we are all ears.

We have a motto to live up to: Leading the Way. And we intend to continue to do just that.