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The 2000s
The travel industry, and the world, changed forever on Sept. 11, 2001. The events of 9/11, as shocking now as they were then, brought in a wave of security measures as travel slowly recovered. Canada 3000 pulled off a triple merger with CanJet and Royal Airlines but couldn’t make it through the turbulent months following 9/11. With 90+ destinations and 4,500 employees, C3 abruptly ceased operations in November 2001. Other low-cost airlines came and went in the 2000s, including Jetsgo and the very short-lived Roots Air. Meanwhile Canadian Airlines was acquired by Air Canada in 2000, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003 and emerged a year later. The decade also saw the debut of a strong new entrant: Sunwing, founded in 2005. Just as travel was finally fully recovering from the impact of 9/11, along came SARS. The SARS epidemic in 2003, and the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 (and later Zika in 2016), proved to be a foreshadowing of things to come.
Despite the many challenges in the 2000s, including rapidly growing competition from OTAs, retail travel agents pushed on. Cruise bookings were stronger than ever and a new way to see the world by ship - river cruising - picked up momentum in the North American market. More and more travel advisors were going home-based, mirroring trends in the U.S. On the supplier side, there was consolidation. In 2007 Thomas Cook merged with MyTravel, formerly Airtours. That brought Sunquest under the Thomas Cook umbrella. And after First Choice PLC merged with TUI, also in 2007, a strategic venture created by TUI and Sunwing Travel Group brought together Sunwing Vacations and Signature Vacations, starting in 2010.
TRAVELWEEK WAS THERE: Building on the decades-long success of its core product, The Travelweek Group’s expanding portfolio in the 2000s included a new monthly e-newsletter for homebased travel agents (now called Sphere), and The Learning Centre, an online platform for agent specialist courses. Our website, Travelweek.ca, started the decade primarily as a company info source. But big changes were coming.
