All Eyes On Dallas

A love affair between Canada and Texas – and especially Dallas – continues and a delegation of tourism officials from Dallas were in Toronto yesterday (June 9) to show their support and thank travel trade partners.

Phillip Jones, president/CEO, Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, noted that Dallas hosted 340,000 Canadians last year, up 27% from the year before. He attributed the positive numbers to awareness, good value and excellent lift, with Dallas being a very easy destination to get to.

“We’ve worked hard on the PR side and I think there’s a ‘been there, done that attitude’ out there [with such cities as New York],” he said. “People are looking for something unique and different. We have all the four- and five-star hotels and restaurants, but at about 40% less – there’s good value in Dallas.”

Jones noted that helping attract Canadians to Dallas — which he described as a hub to the rest of Texas — are its shopping experiences, arts and culture and historic attractions, such as the JFK Museum.

Dallas’s hotel development includes the construction of 10 news hotels in the downtown core alone, which will give the city about 2,000 new rooms in the next 18 months.

In other news, Dallas is the latest destination to partner with CityPASS, the company that packages discounted, prepaid admission to a city’s top attractions, and the city will host the World Travel & Tourism Council Global Summit in April 2016.

Pictured at the Toronto event are (l-r) Jones, Mark Thompson, Frank Librio, all of the Dallas CVB, and Sana Keller of Pulse Communications and Travel Marketing Inc., Canadian representative of Dallas in Canada.