On a day that was “all about RIU,” close to 125 senior managers and executives from across the Sunwing Travel Group convened Tuesday with RIU Hotels & Resorts execs to learn the latest from one of the Canadian travel company’s most important partners.
Move over Baby Boomers, you’re not the belle of the travel ball any longer. That status will be usurped by Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996), who are forecast to be the most active travel demographic in 2025. However, it’s the former who still hold the purse strings, according to data presented by ACTA at the association’s travel summit last week in Toronto.
Canada’s travel retail landscape is changing dramatically – so much so that ACTA is preparing a significant report due in October detailing a foundational shift in the industry that includes higher wages for employed agents, but new ones being hired as sole proprietors (aka independent agents).
The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies and Travel Advisors (ACTA) kicked off its fall Summit series with a full day session in Toronto Thursday, with more than 700 attendees on hand to get the latest industry trends and association news, engage in professional development, connect with peers and industry executives, and meet key suppliers at an extensive trade show, which included the largest delegation ever from Brand USA.
An appropriate song for this soggy summer, perhaps, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” was according to its author John Fogerty, a metaphor for impending change – in particular in respect to his, at the time, troubled band, Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Vienna, home of Johann Strauss, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated in 2025, serenaded the Canadian trade with news from the Austrian capital on Tuesday in Toronto. Accompanied by a classical music duo, and colourful montage artist, the city tourist board’s market manager for Canada Elke Bachner said Canadian visits to the city are surging, not least due to ample lift from Air Canada’s courtesy of its year-round direct flights from Toronto and Montreal.
While many experts consider it requisite posturing during a labour negotiation – and an outcome too dire to ultimately be allowed to happen – Air Canada says it is working on contingency plans that would see it suspend most of its operations in the event that an agreement with its pilots union is not reached by Sunday (Sept. 15) when a 72-hour strike or lock-out notice could be triggered.
More than a hundred golfers turned out last Thursday to help TravelBrands raise funds for The Hospital for Sick Children at the company’s 9th Annual Charity Golf Classic, held just north of Toronto. The picture-perfect day at Eagles Nest Golf Club was eclipsed only by the $308,000 raised at the event – funds earmarked for the SickKids Foundation to help fuel vital research, clinical care, and new initiatives at the hospital.
“Jagged Little Pill” catapulted Alanis Morisette into music superstardom in 1995, with the album going on to become one of the highest selling albums of all time (more than 33 million and No. 7 on the all-time Billboard 200 chart) and forever ensuring that the Ottawa-born singer would be one of Canada’s most famous.
They’re versatile! Following a visit early this summer designed to highlight arts and culture (culminating in tickets to a performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra), delegates from the Philadelphia Visitors and Convention Bureau returned to Toronto Wednesday, this time (ball) cap in hand while hosting select members of the trade at a Phillies-Jays game at the Rogers Centre.
You might have heard this week that Oasis is getting back together – 15 years after the battling brothers Gallagher busted up, seemingly for good after years of sometimes amusing/ sometimes just-plain-nuts escapades by and between Liam and Noel that continually suggested that real life was quite the opposite of the band’s name.
Skal Toronto and Toronto North celebrated 68 years of golfing together yesterday (Wednesday) – and prominent Skal member Thom Vincent has been around for all of them, joked Toronto chapter president Sue Webb.
Travel advisors are key to the Spice Island of Grenada increasing its impact in the Canadian market and the head of its tourist board says it intends plans to work harder – and spend – in this country to make it so.
War in middle east and eastern Europe, US politics, cats and dogs living together! (to quote Bill Murray in Ghostbusters) … It seems we should all just get together and feel all right, which I tend to do when listening to Playing for Change, the amazing collective of world music practitioners who creatively re-interpret favourite songs in the name of peace, love, unity – and charity – through song.
The late ‘70s and ‘80s was a golden age for Canadian bands, even if the success of many didn’t make it beyond our borders. But who can forget bands like Trooper, Prism, Streetheart, Chilliwack, Honeymoon Suite, and… the legendary Doug and the Slugs?
One of rock’s greatest singers, Steven Tyler, has called it quits, succumbing to permanently damaged vocal cords, of which Aerosmith says, “it is clear that a full recovery is not possible.” The band’s legendary frontman injured his vocal cords while on tour in September and said at the time that the injury caused bleeding, but that he hoped the band would be back after postponing a few shows.
Regular readers will know there’s nothing Listening In likes better than a good choir. And suggestions from the flock. This week the two come together with Elvi Cal’s (TravelBrands) introduction to us of Choir! Choir! Choir! (C!C!C!), a unique Toronto-based initiative that started in 2011 as a singing event that interprets popular songs like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” performed here at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
It was big news for a big state: Texas is getting its own Michelin guide. The welcome development for Travel Texas broke as representatives from the state visited Canada last week, talking up and recent developments and current trends in the Lone Star state in both Montreal and Toronto.
Big Bon Jovi hits can fill up most of your fingers, but we’re going to stretch that onto the toes this week with “Keep the Faith,” a lesser hit spawned from the 1992 album of the same name, an effort that was notable as the last recording by the original lineup of the New Jersey band, but also a turning point when the Jon Bon Jovi pop-rockers are deemed to become a little more serious.
Great concerts can become the stuff of legend, but those performances rarely make great records – usually unable to truly capture an electric live atmosphere, convey sound quality comparable to a studio setting, or, of course, present the artists’ visual hijinks. As such, it’s even rarer then when a band makes its breakthrough because of a live album.
A collective exhale from ACTA golfers in Ontario pushed the remnants of Hurricane Beryl just far enough to allow the association’s 34th annual tournament to get off the tee on Thursday, enabling a mostly sunny and typically enthusiastic event that allowed for a little welcome R&R for many members after what association president Wendy Paradis noted was a particularly challenging couple of weeks thanks to the aforementioned hurricane and WestJet strike woes.
With Caribbean destinations in Grenada, the Grenadines, Barbados and Jamaica picking up the pieces after devastating Hurricane Beryl, and several aid initiatives under to help those affected, one song, “We Got This,” performed by a collective of local artists, has emerged as a rallying cry for unity under duress.
It had been three years and eight months since I was last in Nassau. I can say that with definitiveness thanks to the cheery “welcome back” message I received on my WiFi log-in at the Grand Hyatt recently that indicated as much – although I would have recalled the precise timing of the visit since it was my last travel trip just before the pandemic struck. A lot has changed in the Bahamian capital in that time.
Canadian airlines typically don’t get no respect from many Canadians, as Rodney Dangerfield would say. But how do others see our airlines? Well, they’re not as bad as you might think, at least according to the Skytrax, which recently revealed its annual World Airlines Awards for 2024, otherwise known as the “Oscars of the aviation industry.” So, who are the best this year, and how did we (Canada) do? Read on, you’ll be surprised – and impressed.
Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup helped invent rock ‘n’ roll. His 1946 song “That’s All Right,” would become the first single Elvis Presley ever released. Rod Stewart would sing it on a chart-topping album and Led Zeppelin would play it live. But despite being dubbed “the father of rock ‘n’ roll,” Crudup received scant songwriting royalties in his lifetime because of a recording contract that funneled the money to his original manager.
Bonnie Raitt has been turning out tunes for over 50 years and earned enough plaudits to warrant a long Wikipedia page. There’s been 13 Grammys – most recently in 2022 – induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and chart-topping success, which didn’t materialize until well into her career.
Canadians love the beach. And “The Beach” – the nickname adopted by Myrtle Beach, is a huge favourite. This popular destination has been attracting snowbirds and winter escape artists for decades. They love its fine weather, southern hospitality, year-round world-class golf (and mini golf), low-country cuisine, shopping, and, of course, the famed Can-Am Days in March, an annual celebration of the connection between Canada and the South Carolina city.
Even the biggest rock bands in the world had to start somewhere and, in this case, the year was 1978 and a first-ever appearance on Irish TV captured a teenage Paul David Hewson and David Howell Evans in their formative years, showing their chops, if not the style, that soon took them to the top of the pops.
If there was only one takeaway for travel advisors from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) event in Burlington, Ont., this week, it was to recognize the overwhelming variety of the destination – a sentiment stated succinctly by Sarah Chensky of MGM Resorts, who said, “There’s a different Vegas for different people.”
Land of the “pura vida,” natural Costa Rica is a consistently top destination for Goway, with the popular Central American country favoured by clients alongside Peru in Latin America, as well as ranking in the tour company’s top 10 globally.