Destination Canada and Viva Holidays have successfully wrapped up an Australian east coast roadshow in Sydney, with the turn-out for the series of events symbolising the soaring sentiment around travel to Canada.
Following similar events in Melbourne and Brisbane earlier in the week, Destination Canada and Viva Holidays hosted a b2b trade show and networking event in Sydney, followed by a supplier event sponsored by Destination British Columbia, Travel Manitoba and Air Canada on Thursday, and finally a media lunch today. Talk about a massive push.
Speaking to Karryon last night, Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) Marketing Manager Nathan McLoughlin said Canada was “not far off 2019 levels” of visitation by Aussie travellers.
“BC is seeing a bulk of that … and they’re really close to 2019 levels, I think it’s single digits (percentage points) off,” he remarked.
McLoughlin said Destination Canada had originally predicted a return to pre-pandemic levels by 2025/26, but DC had now revised that prediction to 2024.
“2019 was our best year ever. We were at around the 350,000 [Australian visitors] a year mark,” he said.
“So we’re hopeful by next year we’ll be achieving that and past it.”
Viva Canada!
On the DC and Viva Holidays roadshow, McLoughlin said demand and interest in Canada “has shown in the attendance that we’ve had over the last week”.
Canadian delegates were also “really impressed with how engaged the agents were at the agent events”.
“A lot of the Canadians have been coming down for years … and I got numerous comments from them that this is the most engaged they’ve ever seen the travel agents. It’s far more important, the engagement, than the numbers,” he told Karryon.
“It’s a huge testament to this market, that they’re in the middle of their busy period in summer, and they’re all leaving that to come to this market.”
McLoughlin also talked up Destination Canada’s close relationship with Air Canada, which is experiencing “super high” demand.
Speaking to Karryon at the event, Air Canada Australia and New Zealand General Manager Vic Naughton said the airline expected a record month in December 2023 ex-Australia, with 25,000 seats breaking the previous record of 22,000 in December 2019.
This is, he said, despite the carrier flying one less route – ex-Melbourne – out of the country.
Speaking on Thursday, Destination British Columbia’s Monica Leeck called Australia a “hugely important market for BC”, while Travel Manitoba Market Development Senior Manager Melanie Swenarchuk echoed the comment about Aussie visitors.
“We recognise [Manitoba] is not a typical destination, and it’s very unique, and a lot of the experiences are bucket list and authentic,” she remarked.
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