Canadvac Travel Services: Tourism Meets Technology with Digital Boost 3.0

Founded in 1985, Canadvac Travel Services Ltd. is a B2B receptive tour operator specializing in travel to Eastern and Central Canada. With over 30 years of experience, the company builds a yearly catalog of accommodations, excursions, and transfers, which it supplies to international tour operators in markets such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These operators use Canadvac’s product list to create travel packages sold through storefront travel agencies around the world.

When John Simon became the company’s third owner in 2020, one of his first priorities was to bring the business into the digital age. At the time, operations were still largely paper-based. His vision was to modernize the company by digitizing its records and automating communications with clients and suppliers to enhance service quality and increase sales.

Digital Boost 3.0 has a two-phase approach, the first consisting of a comprehensive assessment to determine current capabilities and identify opportunities in the areas of cybersecurity, data management, and artificial intelligence (AI). The second phase supports the implementation of solutions identified during the assessment phase to improve the company's productivity, security risk, and innovation. Digital Boost 3.0 offers funding support to offset some of the costs while working with local technology providers. This program enabled Canadvac to partner with New Brunswick based tech solution provider, Generate Creative Consulting, a digital transformation company that offers AI services, to modernize its operations. Having collaborated in the past, owner and project lead Genevieve Coates is already well-acquainted with the business through her previous work on other Digital Boost programs.

The project began with an assessment, where collaboration with Generate Creative Consulting revealed a clear opportunity to apply AI within Canadvac’s operations. Canadvac had already modernized many of its systems by connecting a secure Salesforce platform to its reservation system. This integration improved both communication and data security. Still, the company saw a need to better support its smaller and mid-sized clients, who could not connect directly to Canadvac’s systems like the larger partners could. These clients often relied on time-consuming web searches or email exchanges from the Canadvac team to build travel itineraries, which made it harder for them to respond quickly to customer requests.

During the implementation phase, Generate Creative Consulting explored various AI platforms, selected the one that provided the most accurate responses, and focused on training them to deliver better results over time. A key part of successfully training AI is having clean, accurate data. Canadvac recognized that if this project had started a few years earlier, it would not have been possible. Their data was spread across difficult-to-access systems, paper files, and individual knowledge. Thanks to earlier work on digitization, Canadvac was able to organize and centralize its information. This provided the AI a solid foundation to deliver useful, relevant results.

The AI platform implemented with support from Digital Boost 3.0 was designed to quickly generate smart itineraries, routes, pricing, and activity suggestions for various towns, all based on Canadvac’s own contracted inventory. Because they had well-prepared and organized data, Canadvac was able to train the AI effectively and build a user-friendly portal. Data input was critical to this process. As clients use the tool, their questions and preferences generate valuable insights that help the product team identify travel demand trends and highlight underrepresented destinations. The system also provides alternative suggestions when needed and adapts to user feedback, allowing Canadvac to continuously improve the platform. This focus on data quality and speed allows the company to deliver more complete, personalized, and efficient service.

Digital Boost gave Canadvac the opportunity to explore AI-powered travel planning solutions to better meet the needs of its clients. After completing the program, Canadvac has seen a noticeable improvement in efficiency and conversion rates. By allowing users to get answers and trip details instantly, the tool reduces the number of emails and back-and-forth with Canadvac’s reservations team. Because of the AI tool and the portal integration, the team’s work is evolving, and they can now focus on helping close sales faster and more effectively.