Looking for a competitive edge? The shoulder season months are a terrific time to invest in the future of your business, your staff, and partners.
RTO8 is pleased to be able to offer a growing number of self-paced e-courses you can complete on your own time, on any electronic device. Courses range in length from 15 minutes to 2 hours and include helpful downloadable resources. Tourism business owners and operators located within Kawartha Lakes, Peterborough City or County and Northumberland County are invited to check out our learning portal and register today.
Bookmark this site, as additional English and French courses will be released over the next six months.
Get inspired with insights about what travellers are seeking and how businesses are responding, and grab some creative ideas to inspire your new product and market development during the shoulder season. The course converts over 100 plans, reports and studies into a fun, interactive learning opportunity about the new reality for tourism, how travellers have changed, Canadian predictions, and some practical, tactical advice. Time commitment: 30 minutes.
Sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, regenerative tourism—is there really a difference? Yes, but there is a common foundation—doing tourism in ways that mitigates the negative impacts of travel or aims to renew the planet, people and communities, while respecting that businesses need to be profitable. This course helps build awareness on the invisible burden of tourism, the importance of sustainable, regenerative tourism, and inspires action. Time commitment: 15 minutes.
Policies Matter. Every tourism business needs to proactively think about their policies because they reflect what you stand for, communicate compliance with regulations, support effective operations, and inform customers, staff, and stakeholders. It’s not difficult to write policies, it just takes a commitment to a 7-step process. This course will explore four critical types of policies for any tourism business: (1) Refunds and Cancellation (2) Sustainability (3) Diversity Equity and Inclusion and (4) Accessibility. Included is an information sheet to help get you started. Time commitment: 20 – 30 minutes.
Creating memories for travellers is vital to all tourism businesses, whether you are creating a new visitor experience or enhancing a current product or service. This course introduces you to the fundamentals of experience, complete with industry examples and a template for you to use when crafting your memorable experiences. Time commitment: 1 to 2.5 hours, depending on how many case studies you review!
Packaged travel offers many benefits to visitors, businesses, and the destination. This introductory course exposes you to packaging travel benefits and the basic terminology of packaging travel. Discover the 9-step process to create, cost, and price your own travel package. Time commitment: 40 minutes.
If you have ever struggled to set the price for a new product or experience, you are not along Take the worry out of the decision-making with this six-part course that includes a $45 template to help make your life easier! You’ve done the hard development work; now it’s time to secure that return on investment. Time commitment: 45 minutes.
Product development is a big investment. Don’t leave your launch into the market to chance. This short course will guide you through everything you need to plan, conduct, and debrief after a test run of your new visitor experience. Time commitment: 15 minutes.
Gone but not forgotten! Here are the trends shared in 2021—and many remain relevant today! So, grab a cup of coffee and check them out. It may just be the inspiration you need for 2022! Time commitment: 30 minutes
Visit our e-learning portal to learn more and register
Any topics you’d like to see added next fall? Please contact Brenda Wood, Executive Director for RTO8 (brendawood@rto8.com). Enjoy!
Bookmark this site for courses to be released this fall and winter.
The Love-Money Matrix / La matrice amour-argent
All businesses need to be profitable to survive. Now is the time to maximize your passion and resources to align your business goals to create new products, services, and experiences for your guests. This short course will help you focus your precious resources by introducing two concepts that invite you to critically think about the importance of passion, making money, your product offerings, and the guests you currently serve and would like to attract. Together these concepts will help you refine and target where to invest in creating new or enhanced offers. Includes an activity worksheet to apply what you learn in the course.
Creativity is Crushing It / La créativité domine
Feeling zapped for inspiration? Pandemic drained your creative juices? Well grab a coffee and enjoy this short course that will give you the clues on how to compete in uncontested market space, differentiate from the competition, and lead the way. Includes examples from around the globe of how companies have taken the leap of faith, focused their investment, and dared to be different.
Identifying Your Ideal Guest / Identifier votre invité idéal
It’s great to use gut intuition to think about who your customer is, but prior to investing time and resources to develop a new visitor experience, it is essential you take the time to identify your ideal guest. This course has been designed to help you think more deeply about your visitor, trigger thinking about product and market development opportunities, and approach your visitor experience design with your ideal guest in mind.
Opportunities and Ideas for Sustainable Tourism
Sustainable and responsible travel is more than a trend, it is becoming an industry standard. Are you ready to take the leap and embrace a more sustainable future? The course will help you understand the opportunities for your business and inspire you to create sustainable tourism experiences through real examples from tourism businesses and destinations around the globe.
Tap into Trends: 2023 / Exploitez les tendances 2023
Trends are a terrific source of inspiration for entrepreneurs looking to innovate and create new, appealing visitor experiences. Check out what trends are influencing and driving change, discover what travellers are looking for, and learn about permanent changes in the industry. This course is designed to get your creative juices flowing so that your business or destination can maintain a competitive edge.