Destinations
Ensemble Elite Celebrate In Marrakech
Ensemble Travel® Group recently recognized its newest class of “Ensemble Elite” members with a special celebration held earlier this month at Club Med Marrakech La Palmeraie in Morocco. The annual event, which recognizes the organization’s top-producing members in the U.S. and Canada based on Ensemble preferred supplier sales in 2017, featured a number of customized sight-seeing, culinary, and shopping excursions exclusively created by Club Med for this special audience in concert with Ensemble’s newest partners – Sahara Experience and Morocco National Tourist Office. In...
Savouring The Wonders Of Australia
Wine and cuisine continue to lead the tourism promotions agenda for Australia, as demonstrated at a recent Australia tourism event in Vancouver. The hosts came to The Loft at Earl’s in Vancouver’s trendy Yaletown district with plenty of wine on hand to tempt attendees. “Australia has some of the world’s best wines because we have some of the oldest vines, in ideal growing conditions,” said Robert Keddy, the head of commercial partnerships for the Americas at the Tourism Australia office in Los Angeles. Australia has recently passed Chile as the world’s seventh largest...
A Little Pride From Thailand
The Tourism Authority of Thailand takes great Pride in Thailand's welcoming nature. And that welcome extends to transgender tourists. The tourism authority brought performers from Pattaya's long-running Tiffany's Show nightclub – which features transvestite and transgender performers singing, dancing and lip-synching – to Toronto for the city's Sunday Gay Pride parade and also had a booth at the parade promoting Thailand as a safe and friendly destination for gay and transgender tourists. Tourism authorities proudly boast that transgender tourists will be well-received in a...
Get Ready For Summer
Air Canada inaugurated the first of three new, non-stop domestic services from BC communities with the departure of AC1976 from Kamloops to Toronto yesterday. Today, the carrier is inaugurating new non-stop seasonal services from Victoria to Montreal and from Nanaimo to Toronto. The new domestic long-haul services are operated onboard the airline's leisure carrier Air Canada Rouge, which will be celebrating its fifth birthday on July 1, and are launching just in time for the busy summer travel season. Benjamin Smith, president, Airlines and chief operating officer at Air Canada,...
Experiencing The Wonders Of Dresden
While Dresden is steeped in tradition, it is constantly evolving and reinventing itself. Here we uncover some of the many reasons why the German city may be a good fit for clients, writes assistant editor, Ann Ruppenstein in this week's Travel Courier cover story. Standing on the cobblestoned streets of Dresden, it's easy to see why the massive dome of the Frauenkirche is one of the city's most famous landmarks, even though it went 60 years without being part of its iconic skyline. Destroyed most recently when the gutted ruins of the church collapsed following bombings in the Second...
A Taste Of Thailand
Thai officials gave those in Toronto's tourism industry some food for thought Thursday. The Tourism Authority of Thailand and Thailand's ambassador to this country – Maris Sangiampongsa – hosted tourism officials in downtown Thailand's Pai Northern Thai Kitchen restaurant to among things promote the July 14 Destination Thailand event in Toronto's core, which will showcase the likes of Thai food, cultural performances and handicrafts. Those at yesterday's event got an early start on experiencing Thai food, with the Pai Northern Thai Kitchen serving specialties from the southeast...
Florida Shines At Toronto Event
VisitFlorida's latest effort to attract Canadians to the state was picture-perfect. The tourism board teamed up with Air Canada Vacations Wednesday on a downtown Toronto promotion that included having multi-media, St. Petersburg, Florida-based mural artist Zulu Painter use spray paint alone to create a large, eye-catching image made of iconic Florida symbols, such as beach, sunshine, manatees and the Space Shuttle. And says Summer Gonzalez, VisitFlorida's marketing campaign manager, the images on the large artwork underscored the diverse experiences a Florida vacation can...
UNWTO Takes Aim At The Future
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) stressed the importance of tourism and technology providing opportunities for innovation and creating the jobs of the future during its 63rd European Commission meeting held recently in Prague, Czech Republic. As UNWTO and its European Member States gathered to set the agenda for the region, Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili described the Organization´s intention to make innovation part of the solution to the challenge of marrying continued growth with a more sustainable and responsible tourism sector. In a strategic discussion on...