Destination Canada Attracting U.S. Market by Matching Travel Perks on Air Canada

Canada is using the lure of travel perks to convince America’s frequent flying elite to fly north on Air Canada as the country steps up efforts to revive crucial traffic from the United States.

Destination Canada, has partnered with Air Canada and StatusMatch to launch a new status match program to encourage frequent American travellers to visit Canada. Destination Canada is offering to match the tier of Air Canada's Aeroplan members that are US residents and have a tier with an eligible US airline listed.

This limited-time offer marks the first time a tourism organization has used status-matching to entice visitors to travel to their destination.

COVID-19 has battered travel from Canada’s largest tourism market. During the first half of 2021, Canada had about 178,000 overnight arrivals from the United States, compared with 6.8 million during the same period in 2019, according to government data.

To help reverse that decline, government tourism body, Destination Canada has rolled out its first campaign targeting U.S. frequent fliers.

It is part of broader $14 million effort by the tourism commission to boost traffic after Canada recently opened its borders to vaccinated travellers. It comes as countries ease restrictions on international travel, with the United States set to reopen in November to vaccinated air travellers from 33 countries.