40% of Canadian travellers to book next vacation with help from travel professional: TDC survey

Transat Distribution Canada (TDC) has shared the results of a recent cross-Canada survey to better understand the travel market.

Conducted by Ipsos, 920 participants responded to the survey as of the end of March 2024.

"It's essential for a network of TDC's stature to take the pulse of the market formally, to survey the travel intentions of Canadian customers at regular intervals and, above all, to measure the resonance of our brands,” said Karine Gagnon, general manager of TDC. “Our last study of this kind took place before the pandemic, so this portrait of travellers' intentions comes at just the right time.”

"The highlights of this survey were shared with our owners and managers of franchised and affiliated agencies last April as part of our Leaders Forum,” she continued. “This data is enlightening for our members and helps them to structure their advertising offensives better, aligning them with the interests of their customers.”

"Overall, the survey shows that travel professionals continue to occupy an enviable place with Canadians when it comes to planning and booking their next vacation, a very positive trend for all TDC network members, whether they work in our franchised or affiliated agencies, in one of our corporate agencies, or our agent@home program. Canadians know they are real experts, specially trained to meet their specific needs.”

From the point of view of Marc Pelletier, senior director of marketing, communications and events at TDC, the findings of this study are positive for travel professionals, and more particularly for the brands of the TDC network as a whole.

“The brands of TDC's franchised agencies—Marlin Travel in English Canada and Club Voyages in Quebec—enjoy an enviable reputation with customers, as do those of our corporate agencies, Transat Travel/ Voyages Transat,” said Pelletier. “What's more, they are also at the top of the list of brands that inspire the most confidence in Canadians, with an average of 3.6 in English Canada and 3.8 in Quebec, and our association with Transat is certainly a factor in this equation.”

“We know that brand awareness is important when choosing a company and especially when it comes to trust,” he continued. “This is even truer when we're talking about a service company. This trust, built over the long term, is a differentiating factor worth its weight in gold, especially in an industry with fierce competition.”

The TDC survey found that, 90 per cent of Canadian travellers are very or fairly likely to travel in 2024.

Also this year, 40 per cent of travellers in English-speaking Canada and 45 per cent of Quebec travellers plan to book their next vacation with the help of a travel professional.

This represents a significant increase over 2023, when 31 per cent of English-speaking Canada and 38 per cent of Quebec customers used their services.

“The three main reasons why they do so are almost all equivalent in terms of importance: being able to book everything from a single place, making travel arrangements less stressful and, finally, talking to a real person and having the opportunity to really verbalize their needs,” said Pelletier. “In short, the human factor.”

When it comes to the destination of their next vacation, Canadians’ top preferences are the U.S. (37 per cent), their own province of residence (35 per cent), and a province other than their own (33 per cent).

The next most popular international destinations are Mexico and the Caribbean (29 per cent), followed by Europe (27 per cent).

When it comes to choosing a means of transportation, air travel is far ahead (68 per cent), with cars coming in second (50 per cent).

For accommodations, hotels are still by far the favourite choice for Canadians at 73 per cent, while house or apartment rentals are in second place at 34 per cent.

Don't miss a single travel story: subscribe to PAX today!  Click here to follow PAX on Facebook.