Meet Rocky Mountaineer’s Karen Hardie

They’re movers and shakers.

Their contributions have changed and continue to change the nature of travel, both in Canada and around the world.

And with this issue, Canadian Travel Press is recognizing their achievements – past, present and future – with the launch of an ongoing, monthly series of profiles on Women in Travel.

In this week’s digital edition of CTP, Ann Ruppenstein talks to Rocky Mountaineer’s vice-president of global sales, Karen Hardie, who oversees a team of 90 and counting, including the inside sales team in Vancouver and field sales teams across Europe, Australia and North America.

“We work with travel industry partners around the world to help them build their businesses by embracing the opportunity to send guests on-board the Rocky Mountaineer,” she says. “It’s a great gig, I love it. We’re a company just committed to growth.”

Coming off of the biggest sales year yet and with global interest in travelling to Canada on the rise, she’s confident 2017 will bring even more growth.

“The world is in love with Canada this year. It seems that every week someone else decides Canada is the No. 1 global destination,” she says. “It’s very exciting to see it at the top and to be in market as I am right now and see all our partners excited by the very early enthusiasm for Canada. We’ve got new gold-leaf domes under construction in Europe that will be delivered in 2018 just to continue to support the demand that we’re seeing.”

Hardie, who has been steadily moving up the ranks with the rail operator since joining the company in 2012, was recently named one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women in the Top 100 awards by the Women’s Executive Network (WXN).

“I’m very honoured and humbled – it’s a bit overwhelming,” she says. “For the tourism industry in particular, WXN recognition has historically been more focused perhaps on banking and other industries. We haven’t really seen a lot of women from the tourism and hospitality industries in the recognition so I’m really excited that this is shining a light on the opportunities for women within the tourism industries.”

For the full story, check out this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press by clicking here.