Agent to Agent: Should I Learn a New Language?

Dear Tammy: I heard there are some colleges and universities that allow people to learn other languages for free. Do you know anything about this? Should I as a travel agent learn a new language?

Tammy: Yes, you heard right. The opportunity to learn a new language for free is definitely available through some top colleges and universities around the world, also known as Massive Online Open Courses. These online learning courses can not only teach you a new language, they can also teach you the history of that language as well as how to use it in business. For this reason, online classes for learning a new language are often a great choice!

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While there are a lot of language learning apps available these days for the many people who are interested in learning a new language, enrolling in a language class in a higher level university is simply going to be much more beneficial for you when compared to learning a new language from an app.

I think that learning another language can be extremely beneficial for travel agents! There are many benefits that come with knowing more than one language, and one of the best and most obvious is having the ability to communicate with others in their native language. Making connections is important when you're a travel agent, and this is one of the many ways you can connect with others.

Also, imagine how many more people would follow your travel blog if you were able to write it in more than one language? Doing what you can to make yourself stand out in the travel niche is import nowadays and this is one of the ways that you can do this. Have you already found your niche? Have you already found your spotlight?

Here’s a shortlist of options. Good Luck!

—The University of Strasbourg in France offers free classes for learning the French language.

—Tsinghua University offers a self-paced introductory Chinese language course where you’re able to pick up the basic language skills for speaking Mandarin.

—St. Margaret’s Episcopal School is another self-paced course where you can learn how to speak Spanish while learning about the Spanish culture.

—Yonsei University offers an elementary level Korean language course.

—The Università per Stranieri di Siena teaches about the Italian culture as well as basic Italian.

—The University of Groningen can teach you how to speak, write and understand basic Dutch.