Abacus has signed a treaty with Trade-wings Institute of Management to provide their students with GDS knowledge. The travel solutions provider will equip the institute’s students with a value addition module on the use of GDS as an add-on course in their ticketing curriculum. According to Rajan Dani, Director, Trade-wings Institute of Management, travel courses nowadays require a strong GDS training, and the partnership with Abacus will complete that need.
The course by Abacus will be a 40 hour module with training sessions. The agreement signed is valid till December 2014, after which it will be renewable based on mutual agreement. Jeet Sawhney, MD, Abacus India revealed that Abacus is keen to tie up with more institutes for such courses, as he feels it is the need of the hour.
“The tourism industry is losing its glamour. Students do not look at tourism as a career option, and it is leaving a gap in quality staff for the industry. We grow as the industry grows, and the industry only grows if its agents grow. This is a step towards ensuring the growth of the agents. We conduct regular trainings on GDS and soft skills for front line staff, and have even trained airline executives on the same. Two sessions have also been conducted with the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) members, during which we trained over 400 front line staff. It is definitely an area we would like to expand in,” Sawhney said.