Breakfast of champions: Air Canada's President & CEO, Calin Rovinescu with Vision 2000's President, Joel Ostrov & COO, Brian Robertson
Lynda Sinclair of Vision 2000 with independent travel advisors, Cara Weese, Nancy Dason, Anita Heidema & Bev Lacastro
Vision 2000 Vice-Chairman, Jack Lazare with ACTA President & COO, David McCaig
Take 70 preferred supplier reps, add almost 300 Vision 2000 staffers from CEO types to front line agents, a way cool venue (YUL's Fairmont Queen Elizabeth) and what do you have? 2 days of fellowship and fun.
This past weekend, Vision 2000 Travel Group got together for their 4th annual conference and the theme this time was Elevation – and were the spirits ever elevated!
Friday evening, a kick-off cocktail party hosted by WestJet was held at the legendary Altitude 737 Club at the top of Place Ville Marie – talk about literally raising the bar! (Could there be a better name for a venue for an all B737 carrier?)
On Saturday morning Calin Rovinescu, President and CEO of Air Canada, gave a very insightful speech. “Air Canada is now 75 years old," he said. "And when you’re a 75-year-old with a 15-year-old competitor, you’ve got to run pretty fast.”
Other speakers included green machine Costas Christ, CEO of Beyond Green Travel, and Vision 2000’s own COO, Brian Robertson, who shared the company’s sales total for the last fiscal year: $552,000,000 (yes, that’s millions) and a goal of $750 million by 2015. Saturday also included preferred supplier round tables, team building exercises and a gala dinner.
What did the participants make of all of this? As Vision 2000 Director, Anthony Tonkinson, said, “It’s so important to build a sense of the company, especially for our home-based staff. It gives us the chance to help everyone understand what we are doing - and how big we are. Sometimes even those of us in senior management are amazed to see just how big we are!”
A lot of suppliers commented on how engaged everyone was. “Very interactive and energetic,” said Walter Mill of Auto Europe.
“Amazing, positive energy. And so nice to see the senior execs mingling with everyone - that doesn’t always happen!” added Club Med’s Susan Laurin.
And according to Erin Jette of the Four Seasons Resort in Scottsdale, “This is a great commitment to the industry – I love the good energy and dynamism. But then I’d expect nothing less of a company that has Stephanie Anevich in the senior management team!”
Looks like the goal of elevating everyone’s dreams, goals and expectations was raised. As Brian Robertson said to the hundreds of Vision 2000 employees in attendance, “Thank you for being here - It’s going to be a great journey and we hope you’ll be along for the ride!”
