The Sleeping Giant Awakens

Travel is a fast moving and ever changing business – as Siren President Ann Layton quipped during her introduction at a recent Air Canada Vacations presentation, “Travel has been affected more by technology over the past decade than porn and the post office. 5 new travel sites have launched since we checked our coats."

I think we can all relate... it’s always adapt or perish in this industry. And ACV along with Air Canada have visibly taken those words to heart with the launch of a price sensitive carrier last year and an aggressive expansion into new routes this year.

Layton’s company, Siren Communications, has been hired by ACV to craft their growing lineup of messages and to take advantage of the opportunities presented by travel hungry Canadians.

It’s not really a secret that Canadians are a good source for travel marketers. According to statistics, we’re not really as cheap as we’re often labelled... we rank 3rd in the world per-capita on international travel spending. Research also indicates we believe that travel is not a luxury but a basic right and we prefer to think of ourselves as travellers as opposed to tourists.

Air Canada Vacations is positioning itself to take full advantage of that research by offering a huge variety of international experiences along with the ever popular fly and flop. Rouge in particular was created with a view to the future travels of the Gen Y market which has a propensity to splurge on good hotels but be very budget conscious on their air buys.

Layton also noted that the role of the travel agent is once again fully enmeshed in the travel planning experience. At the recent Travel Innovation Show in LAS, the 1st topic covered was collaboration with a live agent including the rising trend of live video chats with travel agents.

As capacity increases take effect across the Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge fleets, ACV President Eamonn Ferrin reports that 85% of peak winter season seats to the top 4 sun destinations are already sold. And, we all know there are a lot of seats in the market to the top 4 destinations – in fact 86% of all winter sun travel goes to:

#1 Mexico (1.3 million pax)

#2 Cuba (824,000 pax)

#3 D.R. (527,000 pax)

#4 Jamaica (278,000 pax)

Air Canada Rouge is now operating on 62 routes with 28 aircraft and will continue to boost both over the next year. They’re really ramping up their Jamaica lift operating 767’s to MBJ and mainline AC is serving Barbados with daily 777’s. Grenada has become a year round Rouge destination and Curacao has been added ex YYZ year round with YUL slated to start seasonal service. And, I guess Canadians must consider themselves travellers, not tourists, when we’re in Vegas because AC Rouge is operating 38 flights a week from gateways across Canada.