President's Message
Ask any OSSN member about continuing education (keeping our travel knowledge and selling skills sharpened), and the immediate thought that comes to mind may be “cost.”

OSSN’s Webinars Bring Travel Training Home to You!
By Gary M. Fee, OSSN President

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That's one reason that OSSN works very hard to provide cost-effective training programs for our members. For example, we've combined our association's annual conference this year (on Oct. 19 in San Jose) with two other popular travel agent training events -- the third annual Home Based Travel Agent Show, co-located with the fourth annual Honeymoon & Romantic Getaways Show & Conference -- so that you can attend all three conferences in a single trip. Plus, when you register for the 2006 OSSN Annual Conference, you'll get FREE admission to the other two shows!

Beyond this deal, we've also begun bringing professional travel agent training sessions to you with OSSN's new series of "Webinars" that harness the power of your computer and telephone for the latest supplier updates.

Webinars are just that -- a combination of Web-based onscreen presentations with audio commentary from respected travel agent trainers. You can watch the slides and pictures on your office computer screen, while you listen to the trainer's comments. And, you can even pose your questions during the Webinar, in most cases, if you don't understand a particular detail.

OSSN's new Webinars can save you a lot of time and money in improving your travel product knowledge and sales skills. They also bring down training costs for suppliers, which means more small and mid-size travel companies can now afford to train agents to sell their services (without paying to put a series of agent seminars on the road).

Frankly speaking, this new Webinar service -- which we provide at no cost to OSSN members -- required a significant investment on the association's part. The annual license fee which OSSN pays to a company called WebEx to use its technology to host these Webinars is in itself a five-figure expense. However, OSSN has always placed the highest value on travel agent training, and we're glad to do whatever it takes to bring more high-quality continuing education programs right into your home office!

Watch future issues of the OSSN Daily email newsletter for Webinar announcements. You can also bookmark this page on OSSN's Web site for the current Webinar schedule. Plus, we record many OSSN Webinars and post links on that page, so that you can listen again to different seminars and share them with your fellow OSSN members!