Gold Winner Adventure Travel Company
Silver Winner Fraser & Hoyt Travel
Bronze Winner Maritime Travel (Barrington Place)
When the Canadian chain Travel CUTS closed its downtown office in 2010, you could be forgiven for assuming the internet had claimed another legacy business. But in fact, Travel CUTS was repositioning itself---literally and figuratively---in a textbook example of how the best companies respond to serious competition. The literal repositioning was a move north, out of downtown. The rest of the transformation meant downplaying the Travel CUTS name in order to focus on a growing CUTS subsidiary. Adventure Travel Company opened its doors in the Hydrostone neighbourhood in September 2010, and it took off, with attendance at its monthly travel talk events tripling over the old location. “People assume adventure travel is climbing Kilimanjaro, or Everest base camp. Which we do,” says ATC manager Megan Bailey. “But we also do wine tasting in Italy, cycling in Vietnam.” ATC’s goal isn’t just about flights, which anyone can find online, but to put together trips that are, as Bailey puts it, “off-the-beaten-path, authentic experiences.”
