TravTalk India Online Magazine
The Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), in partnership with TravTalk, organised a series of webinars for its members and the travel trade under its skill development initiative. With several webinars successfully conducted in the last three months, the team plans to bring introduce more sessions in the future.
Manas Dwivedi
During the distressed times of COVID, IATO partnered with TravTalk to organise skill-based online webinars and programmes which, in a span of just three months, have not just imparted skill education to IATO members but to the entire tourism and hospitality industry, including students and faculty of tourism and hospitality management, various universities as well as institutes across the country and overseas. The attendees learnt new skills, got lessons of motivation and understood the importance of digital tools. The webinars had speakers from fields such as wellness, life skills, etc.
Pronab Sarkar, President, IATO, says, “All the webinars we have organised till date have been successful with a large number of people attending them. We have been active in informing our members about all the programmes and we have been receiving good feedback.”
Rajiv Mehra, VP, IATO, believes that this learning will help members in the long run. “There was one programme that had 40 classes that were regularly attended. The participants were so involved! This indicates that the initiative has been a success,” he says.
Depicting the success results of the initiative, the man who put the whole initiative together, Zia Siddiqui, EC Liaison, Skill Development Committee, IATO, informs that the industry participated in each webinar with great vigour. “In total, nine webinars were conducted till January 13, 2021. A total of 10,590 participants registered for the webinars and the same garnered 5,270 views on the Facebook page. The series would be continued till end of January 2021. All the participants highly appreciated this initiative by IATO,” he says.
