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Definitely not worth your precious dollars
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Although I met some nice employees and some even nicer students, in my humble opinion ITMI does not measure up to the massive tuition price. It's difficult to even define what ITMI really does for it's tour directors in training. It's not exactly a school because they can't even begin to cover all the nuances of tour directing in just two weeks. It's not exactly a job placement agency for tour directors because they charge the students instead of the tour operators.
ITMI is really just a clever way for it's Owner/CEO, Mr. B, to make a living leveraging his contacts in the travel business. It's not that ITMI is an outright scam, it just can't deliver very much real value for the $3000 tuition, lodging expenses, and two week time commitment in San Francisco. After interviewing and auditing an ITMI road trip, I came away utterly disappointed with this organization for five very specific reasons.
1.) Pointless Interview-Talking to Mr. B on the audit trip, he didn't remember one detail of our interview conversation. The interview is really just a marketing tactic to give the school greater perceived value. They can't legally stop anyone from taking their courses. A few students would have been good tour directors, but most of them needed a lot of work. One woman almost had a panic attack giving her motorcoach presentation.
2.) No such thing as a Certified Tour Director- In the United States, certification is not necessary to be a tour director. A few cities like New York and DC require licensing for local tour guides. An ITMI certificate would still not allow you to do narration in those cities. In the US, there's no universally recognized certification in Tour Directing and even if there were, the exam requirements would be overseen by an organization of working professionals-not a private school. Most professional certifications require a certain level of work experience, but most ITMI students have never led an escorted tour; that's why they're taking the ITMI course to begin with. No single private school entity would ever have exclusive rights to a universally recognized certification program or be able to charge over $3000 for the right to take the exam.
3.) Average Educational Value-You will leave ITMI knowing more about the travel business. You will also get great tips for tour narration, but you won't get a simulated tour director experience. Unless the ITMI instructors know how you utilize time and how you handle pressure situations, they won't be able to give you useful feedback. ITMI really lacks innovation in this regard. One student I kept in contact with said you have to actually experience these trips before you know what you're doing.
4.) Poor Customer Service-ITMI completely flaked on my original phone interview time. When I called their offices to complain, nobody returned my call for 6 days. When I sent in my check for the audit trip, nobody deposited my check until I followed up with them a week later. They couldn't even get my room request right. One of the secretaries brings her dog to work. C'mon people, where's the professionalism? How can ITMI teach a customer service profession if they don't have top-notch customer service? Mr. B didn't even bother to greet me when I met up with the ITMI group for the audit trip until I took the initiative myself. Most of the students didn't seem to grasp that tour directing is first and foremost a customer service position.
5.) ITMI can't guarantee anyone work-They claim to have relationships with 600-1000 tour operators, but the term relationship is very ambiguous at best. Even though ITMI offers lifetime placement assistance,tour operators don't really want to hire new people to direct tours and ITMI knows it. Even when they get a few job leads, all the grads apply using the same cookie cutter type resumes and cover letters. Mr. B will push hard to get a few people jobs because he knows it's great marketing for the school, but the persistence it takes to have a tour directing career falls squarely on the individual student. I think a lot of folks go to ITMI because they think the school will do most of the legwork for finding jobs. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the 7,000 grads are not working professional tour directors. In a recent article, Matt Manuel, a 2007 grad, said that only 4 or 5 from his graduating class of 35 lasted more than a year after graduation. You can see the article right here:
http://destinationmarketer.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/itmi-symposium-reveals-little-known-category-of-influencers-for-attractions-tour-guides/
ITMI deserves credit for being the first school of it's kind. People should know the very basics before they knock on doors, but there's no reason this type of education should cost over $500, let alone $3000 plus lodging expenses. At the end of the day, I just didn't trust Mr. B and his school to help me achieve my goals and I wasn't going to risk $3000 to find out if he was up to the job.
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