What is A2D?
Las Cruces is an incredible place. The people, the culture, the rich history, the hotter than hot green chile, the great Southern New Mexican outdoors…the list goes on and on of things we locals love. A2D is a program that allows trainees to learn about Las Cruces, and how best to provide a great customer experience for visitors. This program is perfect for all hospitality industry staff to local business development professionals. In addition to the online portion of the course, the Live Class also features a 15-minute introduction to Space tourism, Spaceport America, and their anchor tenant Virgin Galactic.
Las Cruces – Visitor Journey A2D™ is a new tourism awareness training that helps everyone in our destination create positive visitor experiences from their Arrival to Departure, or from A2D!
Highly customized for our area, this course helps our entire community learn more about the richness of what we offer visitors.
Participants LEARN about what makes our area so special, ENJOY meeting others, and join together to STRENGTHEN TOURISM, which benefits us all!
Sign up for a course today and become a Las Cruces Visitor A2D Champion™.
Who is it For?
The Visitor Journey A2D™ program benefits anyone who works directly with visitors or anyone who might encounter a visitor in the course of their job duties.
Citizens and non-traditional hospitality positions, for example Realtors and Police Officers, will also benefit from learning about helping visitors and how important they are to our local economy.
Why Take the Course?
Good question.
Tourism is very important to our destination.
The interactive and easy to follow A2D training helps you create positive experiences by arming you with local resources, service skills and an increased understanding of your importance to our local tourism industry.
Modules cover how tourism works, discovering our area, answering visitor questions, helping upset customers, and much more.
Class activities explore our destination’s unique assets, attractions and challenges in helping visitors.
How Do I Register?
The Las Cruces – Visitor Journey A2D™ program is open to anyone interested in learning more about our local tourism and helping visitors.
When you sign up, you’ll receive immediate access to the Online Course and be able to choose a Live Class session that fits your schedule.
The cost is free.
Go to LasCruces.VisitorJourney.com to register in the A2D Learning Center and get started on your journey!
Questions? Please contact Veronica Quezada with questions. 575-541-2167, or by email to: vquezada@las-cruces.org
Can I Enroll My Entire Staff?
Absolutely! Employers, contact us to learn more about providing the Las Cruces – Visitor Journey A2D™ training to your employees.
Can’t send staff off-property for the Live Class? Why not host a public A2D class at your place of business?
Public classes allow your employees to connect with and learn from their peers in our tourism community.
You can expose your business to a new set of promoters.
You’ll demonstrate support for our local tourism industry.
Please contact us to learn more about creating Las Cruces Visitor A2D Champions in your company!
The Visitor Journey A2D™ tourism training program was designed to increase awareness of how all of the tourism sectors fit together to build the visitor’s total experience. And, how one person’s actions can create a snowball effect of negative – or positive – encounters.
Visitors who have a negative encounter – or feel unwelcome – have the means through social media to tell hundreds of people about their bad experience. This bad publicity impacts income generated from tourism for the worse and, over time, can adversely affect our entire community.
Visitors that have an enjoyable experience will spend more, plan to return in the future, and will tell their friends about the great place they just visited!
The money generated from visitor spending not only benefits local businesses, it also moves through our community, in a multiplier effect, providing lower taxes, new amenities and better infrastructure, which increases everyone’s quality of life.
How Does it Work?
Visitor Journey A2D™ is a blended-learning program presented in TWO parts:
Part One – ONLINE COURSE
There are seven short modules filled with videos, activities and quizzes about our area and helping visitors. The entire Online Course takes about 75-90 minutes to complete, but you can come and go and finish it at your own pace.
Part Two – LIVE CLASS
Next you’ll attend a 60-75 minute In-Person Class to discuss your answers from the exercises in the Online Course. The engaging class gives you the opportunity to share what you know and to learn from others in our community. Once you’ve successfully completed both parts, you’ll achieve your Las Cruces Visitor A2D Champion™ certificate!
One distinction of our online course is that we also provide a 15-20 minute introduction to Space tourism, Spaceport America, and their anchor tenant Virgin Galactic.
Live Classes can be scheduled for Tuesdays at 9:00 am, Thursdays at 3:00 pm, or at a convenient time for your group.
Visitor A2D Champions continue to learn about our destination with access to special resources, updates, and invitations to FAM Tours and industry events.
What Does it Cover?
The interactive and easy to follow A2D training helps you create positive experiences by arming you with local resources, service skills and an increased understanding of your importance to our local tourism industry.
Modules cover how tourism works, discovering our area, answering visitor questions, helping upset customers, and much more.
Class activities explore our destination’s unique assets, attractions and challenges in helping visitors.
Know Our Place in Space
Space Tourism seems like a thing of the future, but in Southern New Mexico it isn’t fiction. We have always had a long history with aerospace research, engineering, testing, and space exploration, and our future with suborbital flights and space tourism will ensure that we always do. Las Cruces offers an excellent home-base for visitors to tour space museums, Spaceport America, and nearby space-related attractions, and our “Know Our Place in Space” portion of the Live Class will bring you up to Mach speed.
Spaceport America is the world’s first commercial spaceport designed and constructed for commercial space flight. Spaceport America is located just a short 45 miles north of Las Cruces at an elevation of 4,600 square feet. It is located on 18,000 acres of land in the Jornada del Muerto desert basin adjacent to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range under 6,000 square miles of protected, pristine airspace.
Virgin Galactic is a commercial spaceflight company within the Virgin Group that aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists departing from Spaceport America, where the company is the anchor tenant. Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane, SpaceShipTwo, successfully completed a crewed spaceflight in December 2018 and carried its first passenger in February 2019. Plans to depart from New Mexico are pending final testing in Mojave, California.