A well known figure in the language travel industry for her work at the helm of IALC, Jan Capper has been awarded an honorary membership of ALTO to recognise the integral role she has played in developing and championing the sector.
The award was presented to Capper – now CEO of CUBO – during the ALTO Day event as part of ICEF Berlin Workshop, which was attended by 2,816 participants.
“It was a special honour for me to receive an award from the association, having spent much of my career in IALC, as a member volunteer and then as its executive director,” Capper said.
“Associations exist to develop, safeguard and champion a sector, and this is particularly critical for study travel”
“Associations exist to develop, safeguard and champion a sector, and this is particularly critical for study travel, with its global scope and responsibility for young people travelling abroad.
“ALTO has given me so much in professional development and in thinking strategically about international education, and I’m privileged to be among its honorary members.”
The ALTO Day event also featured web psychologist and best-selling author Nathalie Nahai as keynote speaker.
In Nahai’s first of two sessions, ‘Seven Psychological Principles of Persuasive Platforms’, she introduced the concept of Endowed Progress.
Nahai explained that when people are provided with a head start towards a goal, they exhibit greater persistence towards reaching it.
By incentivising users to take the first step towards something on your website, Nahai said, such as offering users a discount on their first order, they’re more likely to complete the task.
Nahai also spoke about how the Obama campaign encouraged people to commit to donating a particular amount before they had to input ‘difficult’ details, such as their personal information.
As people had already committed to the campaign by the time they had to do this task, Nahai pointed out how they were more likely to donate their money.
Trust is the single most important element in e-commerce, as influences rest on how well people can trust something
The afternoon session with Nahai was ‘How to use the Big 5 for smart personalisation’.
By tapping into five personality traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and emotional stability) Nahai said it is possible to reach a target audience in a more personal way.
Trust, Nahai told the audience, is the single most important element in e-commerce, as influences rest on how well people can trust something.
Nahai encouraged the audience to anchor themselves in their values, pointing out that 81% of millennials expect companies to make a public commitment to their values or CSR.
In addition to the personal development sessions, ALTO’s AGM was also held at the event in Berlin.
During ALTO’s AGM, news included a revisiting of the ALTO Standard project and that the Deloitte benchmarking report has been closed due to a low response rate from members.
The project was launched in response to a shortage of good quality data from across the industry.
Director of Oxford International Education Group David Brown suggested the lack of response is down to survey overload; that people are asked to complete too many surveys in the course of a year and have therefore lost interest.
The new approach is to create a “report of reports” by accessing all the relevant reports that exist across the sector and amalgamating the data into one report.
Year one will focus on English language destinations by gathering the reports produced by national associations.
ALTO New York will take place in May 2018 to celebrate ALTO’s 20th anniversary.
