America’s Vacation Center made a push for Canadian travelers with the official launch of a new website, Avoya Travel, which it dubs, “Canada’s Vacation Centre.”
The website features fixed vacation packages geared for the Canadian market from tour operators, including Insight Vacations, Trafalgar and Contiki Holidays,  as well as lots of cruise deals.
Unlike in the U.S., where dynamic packages dominate vacation packages on the Web, Canadian travelers to a great extent prefer traditional fixed packages, also known as ITC (inclusive tour components).
The new Avoya Travel website for the Canada market features phone bookings, which are handled by home-based agents affiliated with America’s Vacation Center.
When users of the Avoya Travel website look at a featured vacation like an Insight Vacations European tour, for instance, they are urged to pick up the phone to “get [the] best price.”
In fact, for these tours, Avoya Travel doesn’t display any pricing online.
America’s Vacation Center says the Avoya Travel website features “customized pricing, content, updates and more for travelers from Canada.”
America’s Vacation Center, which is part of the American Express network, is a leader in online vacation packages.
Privately held, America’s Vacation Center was the 49th largest U.S.-based travel agency in 2008, notching $150 million in sales from its outside agents, according to Travel Weekly’s 2009 Power List.
I’ll be curious to see how successful their “Call for pricing” model works in Canada. Almost all the major OTAs in Canada use the Softvoyage booking platform to market and sell ITCs to Canadian travellers with pricing and live booking. Canadian travellers have become very comfortable with the idea of booking their holidays on-line especially from recognized brands like WestJet Vacations, Air Canada Vacations, Sunquest, Nolitours, and others.
Stephen: I think you’d be surprised at the number of online travel retailers in Canada that market online, but take bookings over the phone. Look for some upcoming research on this.
It’s especially so given that tour operators in Canada in recent years have clamped down on travel agency rebating. That has forced some of the online retailers to push for telephone bookings, where they can provide discounts that they couldn’t openly offer on their websites.
Meanwhile, one thing absent from the America’s Vacation Center push into Canada is a French language website. They haven’t gotten around to that yet.
Could you please list top all inclusive package web-sites in UK,Canada and USA.for the Year 2011,and January 2012.
Thank you