MAPLE — A beautiful sunny day and sell-out attendance made for an incredibly successful 9th edition of TravelBrands’ Annual Charity Golf Classic.

Golfers teed off yesterday at Eagles Nest Golf Club in Maple, ON under clear blue skies, and enjoyed plentiful food, prizes and awards and more.

Standout features at the event included an oyster bar, Caesar bar, food trucks, rum tasting, the VANGO VW Van photo booth, and the Talon Grill at the turn. Attendees competed for a chance to win prizes ranging from a Bermuda trip, to a 55” TV, to gift cards. The helicopter ball drop was an iconic highlight. Guests also enjoyed a three-course dinner, where they heard the poignant story of four-year-old Alessio, a SickKids Patient Ambassador. Alessio’s mother shared her family’s emotional journey, detailing his experiences as a patient at SickKids since birth. 

For the first time ever the day’s silent auction was open to all travel industry professionals, regardless of attendance. TravelBrands, its partners and every travel professional who took part in the silent auction helped raise $308,224.21 for the SickKids Foundation.

Taking a break from the golf course, Travelweek sat down with TravelBrands CEO Nathalie Tanious to hear all about the upcoming 2024-2025 season, booking trends and more.

Travelweek: What destinations are you most excited about for this upcoming winter season?

Tanious: “Where do we start? Everything from long stays in Spain and Portugal, to our exotic journeys, to cruises. It’s not a destination but it’s a way of travelling that is more and more popular, and it continues to grow for us. We are that ‘one stop shop’ for cruise and everything pre and post. And then, of course, let’s face it, Canadians love Mexico. Canadians love the Dominican Republic. Canadians love Cuba. So they’re destinations that travellers flock to.”

Travelweek: Are you seeing any surprising booking trends?

Tanious: “You know, it’s a little bit all over the place. You have clients that are doing the whole ‘wait-and-see, maybe I’ll book last minute’ thing. So there is that. But for the more upscale and luxurious bucket list destinations, those tend to be booked in advance. Normally they’re longer stays, more expensive stays, so people do tend to really take the time to book them and book them well.”

Travelweek: The tech at TravelBrands’ call centre got an upgrade recently. How’s that going?

Tanious: “You know what? We moved over to the cloud. We have an incredible partnership with AWS Connect. It’s a very different telephony system, it’s not a legacy telephone system. It’s what’s known as an omnichannel, and we have multiple features that are coming. For example, the identification of the travel agency, the PIN, everything is done prior to the call, prior to them getting a res agent. And we’re going to be rolling out multiple new facets to that system in the weeks and months to come.

“Right now our big focus is everything with AWS and AWS Connect. Our goal is to offer as many self-serve tools as possible to the travel advisor. We want to give them as many tools as possible so that they don’t have to call. Not that we don’t want to speak to them! But for when they need something, or a service, we want them to be able to have it at their fingertips.

“We also know that there are a lot of agents that are not traditional bricks-and-mortar agents. There are a lot of at-home agents. There are a lot of agents that work different hours than 9-to-5. So as much as we can extend our call centre hours, we’re not going to be open at 1 a.m., for example. We want to give them as many tools as possible so that they have everything they need in a couple of clicks.”

Travelweek: This year for the first time TravelBrands opened up bidding for its silent auction to all travel professionals, not just those in attendance at the golf tournament. TravelBrands also had its annual SickKids charity day last month. What feedback do you hear from travel agents about TravelBrands’ commitment to charitable outreach?

Tanious: “We are very excited about it. And those are not just words. It’s for an excellent cause, which is the SickKids Foundation, so many families benefit. And the support that SickKids gives to the families, to the children, is absolutely incredible. Today we have with us James Rice from Rogers Sports & Media, he was actually a SickKid himself. Also today we’ll see Alessio, we’ll hear his story and how the SickKids Foundation has supported him.

“Our goal is to raise at least $300,000. So we need everyone’s support, and to do that we moved the auction online. It gives everyone the opportunity to participate and to raise more money, and that’s great because at the end of the day the goal is to create awareness and raise as much money as we can for the Foundation.”

Travelweek: Finally, as we start to head into the 2024-2025 winter season, do you have any words of inspiration for travel advisors?

Tanious: “Book ahead, book ahead, book ahead. And don’t be afraid to upsell. The client will have a budget, so make your suggestions – and offer more. I’ll give you an example. I went to New York City, and once I got there I said, how about we do this? How about we do that? Well, the travel agent has an opportunity to book all that in advance, and make money, because when people travel, they travel. You also have travellers that will have more of a budget, which is fine. Remember, we need them all. We need all kinds of travellers, as long as they travel with us. ‘Revenge travel’ as we know it is gone. However, there’s enough product out there for everyone.

“I also want to say thank you to the travel advisors for the support, and we’re here for you, and whatever we can do to make your lives easier, we’re all in.”