If there was any doubt that the industry is back, just ask the 350 travel souls who turned out for an in-person Transat event last week in Toronto, or the 2,000 or so travel counsellors who will have attended the road show series by Thursday’s final outing in Halifax (with three shows in Quebec in between).
Positively packed from the parking lot to the ballroom of the airport Hilton, the boisterous Toronto gathering had pre-pandemic written all over it, even if the coronavirus hasn’t quite left us yet.
“They’re ready for it,” said a not-too-surprised Transat Tours commercial director Nicole Bursey, who told Travel Industry Today that the enthusiasm from agents started right from delivery of a simple save-the-date email for the event “months ago.”
“It’s like the old days are new again,” she says.
Featuring close to three dozen suppliers, predominantly southern in nature, but also a few from Europe, agents jammed trade show tables before venturing into a massive ballroom for dinner, presentation, and general festivities, including games and prizes.
Champagne, no less, was served.
The bubbly was meant to symbolize a lot of things, said Bursey: a return to travel after nearly two-and-half pandemic-plagued years; Transat’s 35th anniversary; and thanking agents in an even more meaningful way than usual after all the industry has endured.
Bursey says the company is on the high end of the curve to normalcy and has been posting “many days” of late where sales surpassed the same pre-pandemic date in 2019.
Transat’s new year starts Nov. 1 and the company will have more capacity in the market – at least from Ontario east.
“Sadly, we had to leave the west (of Canada) to focus on our core, but it will come back,” she vowed. “It’s just not the right time.”
At the event, Transat – and its many hotel partners – talked up the company’s extensive southern program, with Bursey noting that Cancun and Punta Cana remain the best-sellers.
But winter programming in Europe, with destinations such as France and Portugal on hand at the show, also grabbed a share of the spotlight.
However, the “number one” message for agents was the new tech tools Transat has to make their lives simpler, especially when it comes to file management.
On the distribution side, Ontario regional manager Dan Prior said staffing/recruiting is still an issue, but is starting to come around, with agent hirings and interviews now happening – as compared to earlier in the summer when job postings garnered “nothing but crickets.”
And despite ongoing airport issues still annoying travellers, Prior says the zeal for travel is real.
“There’s real pent-up demand,” he says. “Travel is back and booming!”