With Canada now welcoming fully vaccinated travellers, Air Canada Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Lucie Guillemette says the message is clear: "It's now okay to travel again."
The AC executive was speaking at last week's ACTA Leadership Summit. She acknowledged the "bumps and challenges" ahead and the disruption caused by new regulations, but argued that "signs of recovery are all around us."
While there is still some hesitancy about travel, Guillemette says a survey of regular Air Canada customers found that 86% said they were already planning their next flight. Six out of ten of those positive responses indicated that leisure travel was the reason for their flight planning.
"I'm optimistic about the sun markets," Guillemette said. "In some areas we are seeing demand above 2019 levels."
On the international front, Guillemette says she believes transatlantic travel will recover more quickly than transpacific, due to strong vaccination rates and close ties for both leisure and business travellers. Pacific travel remains uncertain at this time, but "green shoots of renewal" are becoming apparent.
There's lots of good news from Canada's largest carrier, with lounges reopening in major centres and Rouge returning to service following the long pandemic pause. Other developments include the arrival of more efficient and profitable narrow-body planes to the AC fleet, and the implementation of a new passenger services system (PSS) that Guillemette says offers smoother partner integration for travel agencies and a better shopping experience.
Air Canada has recently relaunched its Travel Ready Hub, which should make the travel advisor role a little easier by offering clear information on the requirements for air travellers in a fast-evolving environment.
"I cannot emphasize enough how useful we believe this tool will be for our customers and agents," Guillemette said. "It puts in one place a great deal of information about testing, vaccine requirements, needed documents, helpful travel advice about things like checking times, and even details about where we're flying as well."
TravelPulse Canada spent some time exploring the Travel Ready Hub, and it really is a strong source for information on entry requirements for all of AC's destinations, testing locations both at home and abroad, information about the journey - from check-in to inflight health and safety realities - and details on changes and cancellations.
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