Transat Holidays' Denise Heffron, V.P. National Sales & Commercial and Nicole Bursey, Commercial Director, Ontario & Atlantic Canada
TDC's Susan Bowman, V.P. Marketing & Industry Relations; Marni Otis, Director of Marketing and Sandra Wesson, Director of Product & Industry Relations with Sandy Pretty of Air Miles
Transat Holidays & Nolitours team
It has become quite the tradition for the hospitable folks at Transat Tours to host their top agency partners in Toronto to a “friendly” at a very special restaurant venue in kicking off their seasonal offerings.
It’s summer in the city, so it must be time to launch the winter lineup – and thus we all gathered for a loud and fun luncheon at Gossip on the CNE grounds last week.
Commercial Director Nicole Bursey says the season ahead is looking healthy from this vantage point due to the level of group business already on the books. The individuals aren’t yet shopping for their escape from the cold, but when they do... Transat is ready for them with a lineup of 30 sunny destinations including 2 new ones – Martinique and Guadeloupe. The 2014/15 Sun Collection comprises more than 440 hotels of which 50 including Decameron resorts and Azul Fives by Karisma, are exclusive to Transat.
To make finding the right holiday for varying vacationers needs, Transat has introduced 4 new collections based on R&R; Sun Savvy, Family & Lookéa. While R&R is quite self-explanatory and Family is broken down to take kids, babies, teens and big families into consideration – I think Sun Savvy and Lookéa warrant a bit of an explanation.
The 22, 4 star properties in the Sun Savvy collection are exclusive to Transat and have demonstrated a high level of satisfaction with vacationers for their atmosphere and value for money.
Lookéa is a Nolitours product in the European tradition that is featured at 5 hotels. It provides a French speaking team to lead vacationers in activities and engage them in a variety of entertainment and sports offerings.
The entire brochure features TripAdvisor ratings for each property because as Nicole pointed out, “People want to go on TripAdvisor to see what somebody from Maine, with no credentials who they will never meet, thinks about that resort instead of trusting someone who has been in the business for 40 years.” My tabulation of the response to that comment indicates unanimous agreement.
Denise Heffron, V.P. National Sales & Commercial for Transat closed the formal portion of the party with the observation that while our industry reflects continuing change and evolution and many business leaders have moved on, many of the faces in the room are still hard at it – and apparently enjoying this crazy game.
