I haven’t made much noise about it, but I’ve been working all year towards something very important to me. And now I have it, which you may have noticed when you see who posted this. I have now graduated with my CTIS!

“Whoa up, there, Tex”, you may say…”What in tarnation is that there CTIS?”. It’s a special designation offered by the American Bus Association called “Certified Travel Industry Specialist”. I’ve taken classes in Customer Service, Business Writing, Advertising and Marketing, Time Management and Financial Documents, and passed ‘em all. Some were great (I still look at the book from the Customer Service class!), and some were not so great, but all were very beneficial to my growth and knowledge of this industry.

Other organizations have their certifications…NTA offers the CTP, SYTA offers their new certification in Student Travel Planning, and there are others. But just as ABA is the top organization, CTIS is the top designation in this field. I would encourage anyone who is truly serious about group sales to consider taking this course. It took me less than one year, and I did learn quite a bit that I’m already using.

The graduation was held on Wednesday afternoon, and was great fun (if a bit crowded…all the past CTIS graduates come to cheer for their new members). We had one of the biggest classes ever (29 of us this year), and it was great to put faces with names, and establish new friendships with classmates we’d never met before (outside of class emails). Can’t wait to be a mentor for one of the new class members.

Ask me about becoming one of the few, the loud, the CTIS Cadre! Once you go CTIS, you never go back….

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