Anyone know of Tourism certificate programs online?

Anyone know of Tourism certificate programs online? eCornell has a program but it seems more geared towards Hotels. I was looking for, maybe, a more general one on Tourism and/or travel.

 

How 'bout this one.

Or the ones on this page.

Or this one; or this one; or this one; or this one.

Or any of the others that are hiding among the 227,000 or so other web pages found in this Google search.

Or, if travel agent training should not be among the choices, then this Google search.

A little Googling deftness can go a long way. Please note, in the two Google searches, above, what were the input strings.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks!

Thanks for the info. I did do several searches (through Yahoo) but most of what comes up is junk. That is why I sought out the wisdom and experience of those on this board who may have stumbled across the program I was interested in. But thanks again for searching for me!

 

Re: Thanks!

That's 'cause Yahoo is junk... in more ways than one! Just stick with Google. And get really, really good at specifying search strings to find that delicate balance between not crafting your search narrowly enough, and crafting it too narrowly so that you miss something. It can be tricky.

I recommend that anyone who is deadly serious about researching on the Web get good and familiar with this web site... but keeping an open mind and realizing that not every last thing on that site is completely accurate. I've found several places where the author misleads, slightly... though certainly not intentionally. If anyone, once they've read the site, wants to know what those places are, don't hesitate to ask me either in a thread or via PM or email or whatever.

 

Re: Re: Anyone know of Tourism certificate programs online?

I didn't see any input strings in the two Google searches, so it sure didn't help me.

 

Re: Re: Re: Anyone know of Tourism certificate programs online?

On any Google search results page, the input text string is shown in the search box itself; as well as in the pale blue bar, near the top of the page, to the right of something that looks approximately like this:

• Results 1 - 10 of about 222,000 for

and then whatever's to the right of the word "for" is the actual input text string.

But there's a different problem in this case. Sometimes Google search results pages can't be linked to, as I did in my post, above; and the result for persons who click on said link is that they're simply taken to the Google front page rather than to a search results page. This can happen when, for example, the filter settings of the person who created the link, as found on said person's preferences page don't match those of the person clicking on the link. I notice it's happening more and more. Google, apparently, would rather have arrive on its front page and do their own searching than have others link to search results pages.

The two search strings that I keyed-in to achieve the two search results to which I linked in my earlier post were, in order:

+certificate +tourism OR travel +distance OR online site:.edu

and

+certificate +tourism OR travel +distance OR online -"travel agent" site:.edu

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Queen Margaret University College

Queen Margaret University College has a MBA in Tourism Management, with Certificate and Diploma stages as intermediate awards. The information is at:

http://www.qmuc.ac.uk/courses/PGCourse.cfm?c_id=109

Good luck!

Michael Weedon, CA

 

Re: Re: Thanks!

Can you specify what makes Yahoo! "junk" compared to Google? Or any other search engine, for that matter? When I first learned how to surf the Net back in 1998 or so, my librarian back in Woodinville, WA, liked Yahoo! best.

 

Google versus Yahoo (and others)

When I first started surfing the web even four years earlier than that, I liked AltaVista best. Back then, Lycos was kicking some ass, too; and continued to until it stopped crawling the web altogether in 1999 and began relying on the worthless, paid search results of LookSmart. Ugh! Actually, AltaVista wasn't around right when the web first started in '94... but it showed-up fairly quickly thereafter (in December '95), along with several others... and I liked it best.

But things change.

And, anyway, when your librarian in Woodinville, WA liked Yahoo better, s/he wasn't liking a true "search" engine. Remember that Yahoo started out only as a directory, much like the non-profit DMOZ directory (which is the one that Google OEMs as its directory). A directory is a very different thing from a search engine! At first -- certainly back in '98 -- Yahoo offered only a directory as its own product. And, yes, people loved it. DMOZ was hot on its tail, though -- even though it had no ads or other annoying pop-up/banner/Flash crap like Yahoo did (and still does) -- and I dare say if your Librarian had given DMOZ an honest chance in 1998, s/he might have been singing a different tune.

In 1998, Google was only beginning as a real product available to the public. Prior to that it had been a mere Stanford University on-campus project by then students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They called it "BackRub." It was in 1998 that the name "BackRub" was changed to "Google," and the project jumped off campus and became a bona fide private company founded by Page and Brin. It remained private until its very recent initial public stock offering... which has since gone through the roof!

And even when Yahoo finally decided to add true, crawler-based search (as opposed to a mere directory) to its product lineup, who did Yahoo turn to? Google! Yes, that's right: In 2002 Yahoo added crawler-based search to its directory product, and that search was powered by none other than Google. And it remained that way for about two years. It wasn't until February of 2004 that Yahoo finally dumped Google and started powering its own crawler-based search engine technology, as it still does today. For me, that's when it went from simply annoying because of all its distracting and work-slowing pop-up, banner and Flash advertising, to bona fide "junk" as far as I was (and still am) concerned!

Look, Google has no rival. It's several full notches above all others in just about every way. In the area of pure crawler-based search, once one understands it and learns precisely how to use it; and once one starts doing identical searches on various engines to see how they compare, one begins to realize that Google's better by an order of magnitude. That being the case, I guess it's easy to relegate all others -- including Yahoo -- to "junk" status in a busy, let's-not-sweat-the-small-stuff world.

But perhaps my characterization of Yahoo as "junk" was an unkind exaggeration. I have many issues with Yahoo that go back several years. I guess it's hard for me to give Yahoo its due. Truth is, it's pretty good... notwithstanding Google, that is.

So, I concede that if one takes Google off the table and assesses Yahoo against what's left, it's certainly not "junk," I guess. In fact, truth be known, with Google off the table, Yahoo's a credible product, as search engines go... maybe even the most credible. But the Ask-Jeeves-owned Teoma is also a worthwhile competitor. Lycos's mature HotBot product is kinda' cool because it searches (or at least used to search) all three -- Google, Yahoo and Teoma -- in a single interface (though not in a fully blended way, as is the case with other true "meta crawler" search products like, for example, Dogpile, Vivisimo, Mamma and others).

But Yahoo's relative credibility still isn't enough to get it even half of the market share that Google enjoys. According to Nielsen's MegaView net statistics through May 2005, Google enjoys a roughly 48% ongoing market share among search engines, while Yahoo struggles to maintain an ongoing average of around 21%.

In May 2005, Google got 2.3 billion searches (54% of edit listings, and 59% of paid listings) while Yahoo got 908 million (just 21% of edit listings, but a credible 34% of paid listings). All others, combined, barely equalled Yahoo's numbers. In edit listings, Google is the hands-down leader. Yahoo, as can easily be seen by its credible paid listings percentage, is about the ad dollars. Google is not. Yet its stock performance outflanks Yahoo's by a fair piece. So profitability, it can clearly be seen, may be accomplished without all the crassly commercial, invasive banner, pop-up and flash advertising that Yahoo users must endure; and which helps to inform my perhaps unkind assessment of Yahoo as "junk."

Just for grins, here are the search engine market share statistics for all search engines for the month of May 2005:

• 48.0% Google
  21.2% Yahoo
  12.4% MSN
  04.5% AOL
  02.0% Ask (includes Ask Jeeves)
  02.0% MyWay
  01.1% Netscape
  01.0% iWon
  00.8% Earthlink
  00.7% MySearch
  06.1% All others

ComScore Media Metrix (qSearch) results through December 2004 are similar, giving Google the same 48% share of searches that Nielsen found, but giving Yahoo an additional 10% or so for a total of 32% (with MSN at 16%, Ask at 2% and all others at 2%). The aforementioned 10% discrepancy, however, is not really a discrepancy at all once one understands how ComScore simply tallies differently than does Neilsen. ComScore's qSearch figures are search-specific but not necessarily web-search specific. So, for example, a search performed at Yahoo Sports would count toward Yahoo's overall total. When one factors that in and adjusts ComScore's data so that it's more apples-to-apples with Nielsen, Yahoo's ComScore share begins to fall more in line with Nielsen's.

Google even cleans everyone's clock in pure hits to its site. The May 2005 hit statistics from Hitwise show Google receiving a 38.3% share of all visits made to both search and directory sites; while Yahoo got just 18.4% and MSN at 15.6%. In portal front page visits, however, Yahoo has no rival at 58.7% (and MSN, the next nearest competitor, at only 23.2%). But then, again, Google has no "portal" per se. So it's not even in that running. Nor, it seems, does it ever want to be.

Google has many more products than its (thankfully) plain-looking front page suggests -- including its new, very cool "Google Earth" product, announced about a week ago, which is an upgrade to (and, thankfully, replaces) its older (and weirder) "Keyhole 3D" product. And Google's innovative "Google Labs" is thinkin' up new stuff every day -- alot of which isn't public and/or shown on the Google Labs pages -- that will become even cooler products.

I dunno, Ted... all things considered, I just don't see how anyone can even argue that Google isn't the hands-down superior search (and other tools, too) product out there. But that's just me. That said, the statistics show that others agree.

The trick with Google is to understand how to key-in search terms in just the right way that will narrow the search to the stuff you actually want without getting too much other detritus along with it; while, at the same time, not narrowing it so much that you end-up missing important and relevant stuff. And that can be tricky -- especially if one is used to using other search engines which employ a different search term syntax. Google, for example, uses boolean operators a little differently than other engines which, if one uses Google's way on them, produce lousy results (and vice versa, when one uses their syntax at Google). It can be maddening!

 

Columbia Southern University offers a Bachelor's of Science in Tourism.

http://www.colsouth.edu/distance_learning/College_degree/BShospitality.htm

CSU also offers the certificate program.

http://www.columbiasouthern.edu/distance_learning/College_degree/certificatedegreeprograms.htm#hospitality

 

The University of Surrey also has a Master´s degree in Tourism which is entirely offered by distance learning.


Regards