Computer Applications Lesson: My Travel Agent
Lesson Background
Still Waiting to Find that Illusive Free Hotel Room
After four long months of winter, Spring Break is finally here. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I would share a Spring Break-related classroom activity.
My wife and I usually travel to Clearwater, Florida for Spring Break. The first year we went, we spent hours searching the internet for the perfect hotel along the beach. The end result of all the searching was a run-down room at the Red Roof Inn in Clearwater, which was only perfect in the sense that we could afford to stay there without taking a second mortgage out on our house.
Since the trip to Clearwater from Southern Indiana is 15 hours, we decided to reserve rooms for the drive down and back. Rather than spend another hour of my life on travelocity.com, I enlisted the help of my students – and the activity Mr. Martin’s Travel Agent was born.
The premise is pretty simple: the students research and recommend hotels to me based on a set of criteria I give them. The students then pitch their hotel ideas to me using a PowerPoint presentation. From these presentations, I pick my hotel room. The winning student (or group), gets a “mystery gift bag” from the hotel, which consists of everything I can take from the room and lobby without going to jail (tourist brochures, newspapers, shampoos, soaps, shower caps, pens, paper, etc.).
I’ve done this activity in my Computer Applications classes and in a Travel & Tourism Marketing class. The students seem to enjoy it, but more importantly, I believe it challenges them to exercise their problem solving skills. It also gives them the opportunity to practice selling an idea, as opposed to regurgitating facts from a slide.
Lesson Resources
Instructions: Travel Agent Activity (Word File)
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