Executive summary
Showcasing the UK leaders in Canadian holidays online
Established over 25 years ago, Canadian Affair has become the largest specialist tour operator for Canadian holidays, offering a wide selection of travel experiences ranging from city breaks and whale watching to mountaineering and skiing. During the brand’s quarter century of trading, the way people find and book holidays has evolved significantly. Consumers are moving away from traditional face to face travel agencies and are instead doing their own holiday research and planning. With an increasing number of providers to choose from, Canadian Affair faced stiff competition to grab consumer attention.
The problem
Improving the online experience with seamless API integration
The brand had outgrown its existing Atcom CMS which had several limitations, impacting performance and user experience. The outdated technology stack struggled to support the dynamic needs of modern e-commerce and content management, resulting in slow site speeds and an inadequate user experience. Similarly, the existing website’s technical set up was hindering SEO progress and needed significant improvement. Quite simply, Canadian Affair required a digital overhaul to stay competitive in an already crowded industry.
The new websites needed to deliver:
- Improved site health and speed
- Improved organic rankings in Google and Bing
- Improved content, usability and navigation
- More efficient, concise and user-friendly CMS
- Improved look and feel of website to support market positioning as higher-end operator
- Improved conversion rate of e-commerce product
- Increased lead generation rate
To meet these objectives, Canadian Affair and Adido embarked on a large scale project covering user experience, design, web development, SEO, GA4 tracking and extensive testing.
The solution
Digital transformation to drive more bookings and business efficiency
The project was divided into two phases. The first (Phase 1) was to launch the holiday bookings, flight only bookings, hotel only bookings and car hire bookings areas on the website. Additionally, there was a need to improve the tour offering online as the existing site didn’t offer enough to users from both a content and booking perspective which meant that CA were losing travellers to competitors.
Phase 2 (which will be launched later in 2024) will focus on adding motorhome bookings as an option as well as a new ‘My Canadian Affair’ log in area where consumers will have the opportunity to manage their own bookings end to end. There will also be a trade log in area for Travel Agents to manage their consumers bookings on behalf on Canadian Affair as well as a dedicated new trade (B2B) website/area for travel agents will need to operate behind a login interface.
The Results
Instant commercial impact
Judging by early analysis, the objectives set before the project have all been achieved. Increases in key events such as purchases are up by 25%-50% across key channels against the same period (May – June 2023 v 2024). Softer factors such as user engagement are also up 12% and time per engaged session is up 16%. Both of these metrics show that the new site has been a great success in a tough market and have produced better income as a result of improved design and user experience.
These measurable successes from the original brief, along with other hard to measure areas such as improving brand perception, are all testament to the dedication and great teamwork demonstrated by Adido and Canadian Affair throughout the project.
