2017 – The Big Surprise

A viewpoint from Transat's Nathalie Boyer

Boyer

Not afraid to travel
In 2017, the world saw a number of political, terrorist, and environmental situations around the globe that could have impacted Canadians’ willingness to travel. There were acts of terrorism in favourite tourism destinations like Britain and France.
There was also a series of terrible hurricanes that did a lot of damage to the Caribbean and also to the Southern US. Some key destinations were severely damaged, and cruise ships have had to be rerouted and repositioned.
And yet, we have seen that Canadian consumer confidence in travelling has not diminished at all. We saw demand actually grow, and Canadians were not afraid to travel to Europe or to many other parts of the world, despite the many problems reported in the news.
In fact, TDC had one of its best sales results in 2017 in recent history.

2018 – The Next Big Thing

Change and innovation
We see a number of great opportunities for our group for the next 12 months and beyond, as the industry and the market continue to evolve. We are committed to pursuing change and innovation in our business to take advantage of new opportunities.
One example of that innovation is our new agreement signed in 2017 with the AIR MILES Loyalty program last July. In 2018, this agreement will have a tremendous impact on our company, our travel consultants and our partners.
Transat Distribution Canada (TDC) has enjoyed an exclusive relationship with the AIR MILES loyalty program for 18 years. Based on that success, AIR MILES announced last July that it would outsource all of its package vacations and cruise redemption business to TDC.
Currently, our growing number of Transat Agent@Home consultants and all of our professional travel consultants working in our bricks-and-mortar agencies are both issuing AIR MILES and handling AIR MILES redemptions.
But later in 2018, we are launching an AIR MILES booking engine which will be a big plus to our consultants and to AIR MILES collectors looking to redeem. We are very excited about the benefits this booking tool will bring to our organization and our supplier partners.
We are excited about the growth this will bring, as we assist the millions of Canadians who participate in the AIR MILES loyalty program in finding the perfect vacation.