Air Canada to start direct flights from Delhi to Toronto
Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
After successfully hosting 4000 international delegates during the Amway Leadership Seminar last year, Tourism Toronto is now focused on positioning the city as an incentive destination in India. “Toronto has usually been perceived as a business city, but we are trying to position Toronto as an incentive destination for multinational companies headquartered in India that need to organise global sales conferences or trainings,” stated Mark Crawford, director, international business development, Tourism Toronto. Incentive groups going to Toronto usually visit the Niagara Falls and the surrounding wine region famous for ice wines.
“Outbound MICE from India is growing because they are finding new places to go to apart from Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. The positive effects of the publicity that we gained from Amway coming in last year is still continuing. The awareness about what Toronto has to offer as an incentive destination is growing among corporate MICE agencies in India,” opined Crawford, adding that, during his recent trip to India, six to seven incentive groups have shown interest in hosting their next incentive programme in Toronto with group sizes ranging from 40 to 1000 pax. Tourism Toronto is targeting different industries for incentive travel including cement, paint, insurance, electronics, multi-level marketing companies, to name a few.
As part of this promotional effort, Tourism Toronto will be rolling out a promotional incentive programme for corporates and a promotional achievement-oriented scheme for the travel trade by mid-March this year. “We are an organisation that offers incentives for certain corporate grou ps going to Toronto. We are aware that we have a lot of competition in India and hence we are currently developing a promotional incentive programme for corporates, which will be in phased format starting with small groups. Also we are looking at ways to reward and inspire travel agencies through a promotional achievement-oriented scheme,” mentioned Crawford.
To help reduce air travel time between India and Canada, Air Canada will be starting direct flights from Delhi to Toronto from November this year. Also the airline is planning to start direct flights from Mumbai to Vancouver.