Air Canada Vacations held its first in-person event since 2019 Tuesday night as 600 travel agents gathered in Montreal and 1,500 more connected virtually.
"We chose to hold our event in Montreal, because our head office is there, it was important for us to present our team and show our offices," explained Nino Montagnese, Vice-President of Air Canada Vacations.
The event started with a trade show which brought together dozens of partners, destinations, suppliers, hoteliers. Bahia Principe Hotels & Resorts and Sandals and Beaches Resorts were the lead sponsors and featured regions were Mexico and the Caribbean.
The trade show was followed by a cocktail before the official presentation of Air Canada Vacations, hosted by Montagnese who introduced the various presenters: Lucie Guillemette, EVP & Chief Commercial Officer and Marco Gagnon, Sales Manager, Quebec as well as several star suppliers (Sandals & Beaches Resorts, Iberostar Hotels, AMR Resorts Collection) who took the stage to announce their most recent product updates.
"We have taken advantage of the pandemic to adjust, and we continue to do so, and as of today we are in the process of fixing all the little things that we had to update. Thank you all for your presence this evening, in person and virtually, we could not have made it without your support," said Guillemette.
The big star of the evening was the very first entirely digital brochure of the Sun Collection, which after 40 years in printed format, was launched with great fanfare in a digital version.
"This year, our brochure of the last 40 years is now completely digital. The world has changed, and we had to reimagine how we operate to meet your new needs and those of your customers," said Selma Filali, Senior Director, Marketing and E-commerce.
"We wanted to offer you a tool that would allow you to act in a totally fluid way, and for our hotel partners, we wanted to offer them something that really enhanced their properties. The brochure also presents new options, based on your suggestions, such as search by hotel name, by destination and popular filters and sharing options."
The enhanced self-service options available to travel agents on the Manage Your Booking page on aircanadavacations.com will allow travel agents to better serve their customers. ACV's digital initiatives are developed based on the evolving needs of their travel agent partners.
"We launched ePackages which offer more flexibility and provide our partners with the tools they need to easily book Flight and Hotel packages for their customers wherever Air Canada operates. "
Mr. Gagnon also talked about the Vacation Promise and the Cruise Promise, as well as the CareFlex and Carefree solutions, which allow customers to travel with peace of mind, providing agents with turnkey tools to assist their customers.
"We are in the process of updating all our protocols to make your life easier, and those of your customers. It is still and will always remain our main objective, to work all together to offer the vacations of dreams to customers," concludes Gagnon.
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