Warner Village Theme Park's highly effective industry training program, the Scooby-Doo! 'ploma moves into the new millennium and becomes the first tourism related online interactive training program in Australia.

The program, online at www.theme-parks.com.au includes four modules which raise overall awareness and general knowledge of Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World, Wet'n'Wild Water World, and the Gold Coast destination.

Warner Village Theme Park's Group Marketing Manager explains that the move towards Internet technology will remove the distance barrier between metropolitan offices and regional staff.

"Scooby-Doo! 'ploma online will allow travel agents in regional areas who often miss out on product training due to their location to learn more about Warner Village Theme Parks," said Mr Minnikin.

"We also hope that by educating travel agents about the features of the Gold Coast, we will bring more visitors to the region, boosting tourism growth and positively impacting related industries.

The training program has been endorsed by AFTA, the Australian Federation of Travel Agents.

The great part about Scooby-Doo! 'ploma online is that it will allow participants to receive immediate feedback on each product and provide further information on related topics, simply by linking to our web sites," he said.

Many wholesale travel organisations within Australia including Harvey World Travel, Traveland, National World Travel and UTAG have already committed to incorporating the Scooby-Doo! 'ploma online into their internal training regimes.

"The concept was developed in a offline format 12 months ago and we are delighted with the response from travel agents so far, Traveland are even planning to utilise the Scooby-Doo! 'ploma to launch their own online training program," said Mr Minnikin.

"The training program was originally designed for Australian reservations sales staff and travel agents directly involved with selling and promoting Warner Village Theme Parks. The advantage of the Internet is that it allows us to globalise the training process and also cater for international travel agents.

We have found that many wholesale reservations staff don't have sufficient knowledge of the parks or the Gold Coast to confidently answer questions from their clients. This training program will help them gain a better understanding of the product and, in doing so, allow them to offer better levels of customer service and, of course, help them better sell the Gold Coast's best theme parks," he said.

Everyone who completes the program will be issued with a Scooby-Doo! 'ploma and Warner Village Theme Parks will be run a range of incentives with a number of great prizes on offer.

Scooby-Doo! 'ploma online, an initiative of Warner Village Theme Parks, was developed in conjunction with Speedwell Media in Brisbane.

For more information about the Scooby-Doo! 'ploma online, please contact Louise McGregor, Warner Village Theme Parks eMarketing Business Manager on (07) 5588 2261.

Media information: Ilka McCouat, Communication Executive Warner Village Theme Parks Ph: 07 5573 8315 Fx: 07 5573 8495 Email: ilkam@movieworld.com.au

Digital screen dumps of Scooby-Doo! 'ploma online are available on request