Uniglobe Travel's (Western Canada) President Irv Wight & V.P. Hank Oostveen
Claire Roy, MSC Cruises; Cathy Denroche Browne, Oceania Cruises; Ian Patterson, MSC Cruises; Christine James, Vacation.com; Samantha Jervis, Regent Seven Seas Cruises; Michelle Sutter, Holland America & Traci Farden, Royal Caribbean/Azamara Club Cruises
Dubai Tourism's Daniel Schwartz & Jessica Herring; Kayla Shubert, Tourism Authority of Thailand; Azmina Pirani, Bestway Tours; Carina Tang, Kenya Airways & Hardeep Sidhu, SITA Tours
Uniglobe One's Shelley Toomer, Nanaimo & Carrie-Ann Arbour, Edmonton, chat with ACV's Soran Prasad & Marigold Frontuna
Attendees at this year’s Uniglobe Travel Western Canada’s annual spring conference were certainly wowed by the number of preferred suppliers at the trade show. “We’ve never had so many before,” was a sentiment echoed by more than a few happy delegates who were busy catching up, getting the latest updates and collecting publicity materials. Among the 100+ suppliers there, about 40% were new participants which included tourist boards, airlines, hotels, cruise lines, wholesalers and car rental companies.
This year’s conference was held at the River Rock Casino Resort in Richmond, which attracted 260 owners, managers and front line staff from Alberta, B.C., Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Expounding on the theme, ‘Shaping the Future’, Uniglobe’s V.P. Hank Oostveen said, “The business world is changing. We need to re-engineer who we are and to become more proactive as opposed to being reactive.”
Part of keeping up with big changes includes being on top of technology. As such, this year’s conference included a tech workshop, and other informative topics like river cruising and dealing with leisure groups.
“We want people to go back to their agency, armed and ready to cope with any questions their clients may have,” continued Oostveen. In the pipeline, Oostveen hopes to expand more within Western Canada in areas where Uniglobe currently does not have any reps, for instance, Abbotsford.
Of course, it wasn’t a weekend of all work and no play. At the Friday evening networking function hosted by Dubai Tourism, delegates dispensed with formalities and had loads of fun in a team building exercise to create the tallest (and nicest) tower.
During the gala awards dinner on Saturday night, individual and corporate achievements for the year were lauded. These included Franchise Owner of the Year, Jamie Angus-Milton of Uniglobe Carefree Travel Group in Saskatoon and Calgary’s Uniglobe Beacon Travel, who clinched the Quantum Leap Award for Greatest Revenue Growth.
Also, as part of the evening’s program, a silent auction was held with proceeds going to Plan Canada, a charity that benefits women and girls in disadvantaged West African communities through its “Because I Am A Girl” initiative.
“We encourage drinking during the dinner as people will spend more money for the silent auction,” jested Oostveen. Uniglobe has partnered with this charity over the past 15 years and has been involved in projects like building wells and schools, as well as micro-financing female operated businesses in Guinea.
This was certainly a conference that ran the full gamut from networking to education and a chance to help the less fortunate.
