Published March 2002

Enrollment remains steady for EdCC travel program

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

Despite a sluggish economy and bruised travel sector, students of all ages and backgrounds continue to enroll in Edmonds Community College’s Travel and Tourism program, department head Beth O’Donnell said.

“We’ve been pretty steady,” she said, noting that about 60 students are taking classes this year.

Of those 60, between 40 and 50 percent are international students. Some are recent high school grads; others are in their 30s and 40s, “changing careers for a variety of reasons,” O’Donnell said.

“My oldest student was 77, and he graduated,” she said. “It was his third career. He (had) retired for three years and hated it, so he decided to come back to school.”

What he found when he got there was a Travel and Tourism Department that offers a two-year Associate of Technical Arts degree, a three-quarter-long certificate program; and a two-quarter-long certificate program designed for people who want to focus on one industry sector.

The department offers courses in airline tariffs and ticketing using the Apollo Galileo airline reservation system, “one of the two largest national systems,” O’Donnell said, with students getting more than 100 hours of computer experience before graduating.

And while a changing airline commission structure and an increase in Internet sales means most of her students probably will not sell airline tickets at the rate she did when she first entered the industry some 15 years ago, O’Donnell said she wants students to have a firm grasp on the subject, “because there isn’t much aspect of travel that doesn’t at least involve getting a ticket from somewhere.”

The department also offers courses on tourism geography, delving into regions’ culture, religion and food; cruises; tour and land transportation; travel sales; and Internet research, “because one thing they are not going to be able to get away from is knowing everything about the Internet,” O’Donnell said. “And I’d like them to walk out knowing more than most of the clients do, so they can keep that level of professional consultant.”

As for the health of the travel industry and what will await her graduates, O’Donnell said it’s starting to pick back up following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. There are indicators out there — students are finding training internships; former students are moving to new jobs within the industry — that allow for some optimism.

“What that shows is that people understand that within — barring anything else hideous happening — within the next year, travel is pretty much going to be back to normal, in my mind,” she said. “So a lot of companies that consolidated or laid a few people off or had people (work) fewer hours are going to get back to their normal schedules and start hiring again.”

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