The TDC annual conference was held this past week in Montreal and Toronto with the theme "Awaken the athlete in You." TravelPulse Quebec's Catherine Maisonneueve sat down with Transat Distribution Canada's Karine Gagnon and Marc Pelletier at the in Montreal as 450 agents, suppliers and agency owners gathered at the Saint-Hyacinthe Convention Centre.
Catherine Maisonneuve, TravelPulse Canada: You seem to have a recurring sports theme, in 2022 the theme of your annual conference was "Surf the wave", in 2023, "Rebound" and this year, "Awaken the athlete in you". Is this intentional?
Karine Gagnon: In fact, you pointed it out to us! In 2022, we were coming out of COVID, so we had to navigate and surf in this new reality. In 2023, it was an exceptional year, so yes we were riding the wave, and this year, we were inspired by the Olympics for our theme with "Awaken the athlete in you", because our travel advisors are full of knowledge, Maison wants to bring them to the top of their knowledge and performance, and for them to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses in order to be able to focus on personal and professional development. The network is confident about 2025, that said, we have to work harder than in 2023.
CM: This year your focus seems to be on sales, targets and performance for your conferences and workshops, is that right?
KG: It's super important to have goals, and for us to organize the conference, it's to offer an opportunity for agents to take a step back and make a plan for the year ahead. In 2022, agents were in "customer service" mode, in 2023 too and rebooking, but this year, the need is more on the side of sales optimization, tools and performance.
Marc Pelletier: This year, we also focused on quality rather than quantity. We gave the choice of participating in one- and two-hour conferences and 75-minute workshops of your choice (sales, luxury niche, content creation). Our formula is more relaxed this year and we preferred to do less, but to focus on the quality of the content, take the time to answer participants' questions and just take the time rather than do too much.
Participants of this edition also had the chance to complete a "Tik Tok Challenge" where they had to create a video capsule under the supervision of Alexandra Turcotte, from the HEYA agency. The best concept won a prize offered by GAdventures, a TDC partner. Artificial intelligence was also on the menu with a workshop on "how to take advantage of it and how to use it to your advantage to make your work more efficient". This year's conference brought together 50 privileged partners and 400 industry professionals for 2 days.
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