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Air Canada does Dallas

Airline steps up marketing non-stop Vancouver-Dallas route
dallas
Tourism Dallas vice-president Mark Thompson is in Vancouver to meet with travel agents and promote his city as a vacation destination. Photo Glen Korstrom

Air Canada has started stepping up the marketing for its new non-stop daily flights between Vancouver and Dallas — flights that it launched Feb. 5.

The planes have not been full, said Bonnie Walker, who is the airline’s sales director for western Canada. Part of that could be because the airline did not launch substantially reduced fares to launch the route, she told Business in Vancouver at an event hosted with Tourism Dallas at the Hotel Georgia March 7.

Round-trip non-stop flights through April and May are priced at about $465, which is less than the $492 that American Airlines charges for many of its twice-daily, non-stop, return flights between the two cities. The Air Canada flights are marginally more than the Alaska Airlines flights that make a stopover in Seattle and are priced at around $432 for most of the next couple months.

Non-stop flights take about four hours while one-stop flights can be about six and a half hours.

“We will continue to bring capacity into YVR but we need to get the word out there,” said Walker. “It’s a new route and not everyone knows about it yet, or how amazing Dallas is.”

Air Canada is using Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) planes that carry 75 passengers with a configuration that has 10 business-class seats.

Tourism Dallas vice-president Mark Thompson told BIV that he is in Vancouver for more than a day trip and that he will be meeting travel agents, media, and potential corporate clients who travel to Dallas.

“The location of Vancouver for continuing service onto Asia is extremely important and, strategically, we’re delighted about that,” he said.

‘We’re even more excited about service between Vancouver and Dallas.”

Thompson described Dallas as being affordable with luxury hotels that can be hundreds of dollars less per night than in New York.

A train from Dallas Fort Worth airport to the city’s downtown is US$2.50 and free shuttle buses operate in the downtown core, he said.

That core, he said, has transformed in the past 20 years from being largely corporate to now having a population of about 40,000 people who live there.

That has made the area more livable and more desirable for people who do not want to rent cars.

Sights in the area include the eight-year-old, 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys play; the Dallas Museum of Art, where a major exhibit of Mexican art launched on March 12 and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealy Plaza, which examines the life of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and overlooks the intersection where he was assassinated in 1963.

gkorstrom@biv.com

@GlenKorstrom

To read original article, click here: https://www.biv.com/article/2017/3/air-canada-steps-marketing-vancouver-dallas-route/