FIT disruption: Worldia reports 632% growth in Canada as advisors create complex trips in minutes

Since launching in Canada a year and a half ago, next-gen tour operator Worldia has achieved a staggering 632 per cent growth in sales—a signal that its technology-forward approach to selling fully independent travel (FIT) is striking a chord with Canadian travel advisors.

For decades, FIT has presented both opportunities and headaches for the trade.

Highly-customized trips—multi-destination itineraries, featuring combinations of flights, hotels, rail, ferries, tours, and rental cars—offer strong commissions and deeply loyal clients.

Yet the complexity of building and managing them has historically required hours, days and weeks of research, quoting, supplier coordination, and administrative follow-up.

Worldia is out to change that dynamic.

Based in Paris, France, and refined over the past 12 years in Europe, the company combines advanced technology, AI-powered automation, and a full tour operator backbone to allow travel advisors to build, customize, price, and sell complex FIT itineraries quickly.

Now, with rapid adoption across Canada, the company is positioning itself as a foundational partner in the future of retail travel distribution.

Solving FIT’s biggest problems

Worldia’s Canadian expansion has been led by Jonathan Boiria, head of international business development, alongside technologist Ryan McElroy, who was brought on as a strategic advisor for North America last year.

Speaking to PAX via video link recently, both executives are clear about the problems Worldia sets out to solve.

“We answer a need that is very clear: how to book FIT in a way that's fast, simple and uncomplicated,” Boiria said,

READ MORE: Worldia accelerates Canadian expansion with strategic team appointments

In Europe, Worldia was initially developed to solve a common challenge faced by brick-and-mortar travel agencies: how to talk to the client that walks into a store, requesting a customized Greek island-hopping itinerary (for example).

In many cases, agents couldn’t help, on the spot, because the trip wasn’t available as a predefined package.

Worldia’s B2B technology answers FIT requests like that – in real time, in front of the client.

“Agents can build a tailor-made package in a few minutes – on weekends, evenings, whenever – without having to call a supplier,” Boiria explained. “They no longer have to do it the old-fashioned way, piecing something together with 10 suppliers, requoting everything, and going back and forth. They can do it in one stop, with real-time pricing and availability.”

In other words, the platform, available in both English and French, allows advisors to create sophisticated trips, priced dynamically, with margin visibility and standardized workflows.

The system includes AI-powered “Smart Forms” that transform client leads into a structured itinerary instantly, allowing advisors to refine and present polished proposals within minutes. Consumers. meanwhile, can see everything in an email and on an app. 

It’s fully white-labeled, too, ensuring advisors maintain ownership of the client relationships.

McElroy expanded on the significance of this approach.

“It really positions the travel advisor as the brand,” he said. “When you're doing FIT, it takes creativity both from the consumer and the advisor. But it’s actually the intellectual property of the advisor that should be showcased, right?”

“After all, it's their trip, design, guidance, and advice that creates the trip unlike any other trip.”

At its core, Worldia functions as what McElroy describes as a “sales enablement engine,” allowing advisors to accelerate their business cycle.

“We talk a lot about quick time to value,” he said. “The faster an advisor is able to provide value to a consumer, the faster a consumer can get into the conversation and consultation quicker, which makes the quote-to-booking ratio a lot shorter.”  

That efficiency translates directly into increased conversion rates, the team says,

“A typical itinerary gets booked within less than 10 days on average, across all destinations, which is really, really fast,” Boiria said.

How fast does it take to generate an itinerary with Worldia? It depends on the request.

A pre or post-excursion itinerary involving a handful of partners could take a few minutes, whereas a 30-day tour around Europe (for example) might take longer.

“It depends on how much you need to customize it,” Boiria said.

Still, extraordinarily complex itineraries can be built far faster than the traditional way, the team says.

“The longest one we have right now is 98 days, involving 60 products. That obviously took longer. But it’s still quicker than having to do it all yourself,” Boiria said.

The platform aggregates and connects inventory across vetted flights, hotels, rail, transfers, ferries, car rentals, tours, theme parks, and even major events—including new Formula 1 packages—into a single unified environment.

“Our platform puts everything together, giving the best offer to the agent to book,” Boiria said.

Real-time pricing and availability, meanwhile, simplifies the process.

“Travel advisors can't afford to be waiting days or weeks for suppliers to get back to them,” Boiria said. “Our platform solves that because it gives the price in real time.”

AI that works with real inventory

While artificial intelligence has become a buzzword across the travel sector, Worldia’s implementation is tightly integrated with real, bookable inventory.

Unlike generic AI tools, like ChatGPT, which can also generate itineraries, Worldia’s AI functions within a live supply ecosystem.

“What makes us different is that it’s layered on top of our inventory,” McElroy explained. “So there’s no hallucinations. There’s no, ‘Hey, go to this waterfall or take this excursion that does not exist.’”

In Worldia’s environment, advisors input parameters and click a button, which then creates a PDF of a proposed itinerary and quote.  

It also allows advisors to generate multiple destination options simultaneously.  

“We allow travel advisors to spend more time consulting and advising and less time on the phone,” McElroy explained.

The quotes an advisor sends, via link, update dynamically. “As soon as consumers open the quote, it's recorded, so they’re never out of out of date with a real quote,” McElroy said.

Worldia also aims to solve a long-standing back-office headache with FIT planning: collecting commissions.

“It’s one invoice, one commission check,” McElroy said.

Tour operator backbone

While technology is the focus, Worldia still operates as a full-service tour operator, which includes offering support before, during, and after travel.

The company has 24/7 in-destination support and maintains a team of nearly 100 to monitor and manage trips continuity.

“If there's bad weather, or a ferry crossing that is cancelled, we rebook the client,” Boiria said.

While Worldia emphasizes automation, it still values human interaction. Advisors are encouraged to contact the company’s team for guidance, when needed, as well as for refund requests or changes, which staff are authorized to handle.

“The average wait time [for phoning in] is three minutes,” Boiria noted.

Adoption across Canada

Worldia entered Canada with a small group of early partners, including Tisson Travel Group in Alberta, which PAX profiled last year.

Since then, other major travel companies have partnered up, including Transat, Trevello, Travel Best Bets and Uniglobe.

READ MORE: Alberta’s Tisson Travel Group taps new tech that speeds up FIT planning

The growth reflects a broader shift in consumer behaviour, said McElroy.  

“A lot of consumers these days don’t want to book out of a brochure,” McElroy said. “They want to go when they want to go, to a destination of their choosing.”

Travellers increasingly also seek complex, multi-destination itineraries, combining rail and car rentals, he said.

“They want to stay at different type of hotels, in a city centre one day, the outskirts another.”

The company wants to help advisors expand into FIT—especially those who previously avoided it.

“We have travel advisors that specialize in groups or cruises, and they want to diversify, but they've never booked FIT in Japan or Morocco,” Boiria said. “They now have ready-made options and destination advice.”

The result is increased confidence, he said.

“We often hear feedback such as, ‘You made me look so good and knowledgeable and professional about it,’” he said.

The future of FIT planning

Worldia’s leadership views its platform (which advisors can use for free) not just as a productivity tool, but as a fundamental shift in retail travel operations.

“We want our technology to become the standard for building and quoting FIT,” Boiria said.

And McElroy believes the impact extends beyond operational efficiency to market share.

“We strongly believe we can be a linchpin to create an environment where more consumers will book with travel advisors,” he said.

Worldia’s platform, he said, enables advisors to compete effectively against online booking channels by combining technology, service, and personalization.

The mission is to elevate the role of the advisor—not replace it.

“Technology becomes the equalizer,” McElroy said. “Experience, relationships, and service become the competitive advantage.”

For more information about Worldia, travel pros in Canada can contact Jonathan Boiria at jboiria@worldia.com.

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