AIR CANADA TRIES CROWD FUNDING

Posted on 07/22/2016 | About Canada

Air Canada has launched a programme where people can fulfill their travel goals with funds raised by strangers. It’s a crowd-funding platform that the airline says is meant to help make peoples’ dreams a reality.

The launch of ‘Embarq’ is partnership with marketing firm JWT. It allows people or groups to upload a profile identifying a destination that they want to fly to and an estimate of how much it will cost. Profilers are welcome to share a story, pictures and video and provide a timeline for when they need these funds.
They are encouraged to share the post with people on social media.
The airline makes no financial contribution to any of the travellers and states that they do not retain a percentage of any of the funds raised, as other crowd-funding platforms do.
Air Canada will certainly benefit from the programme in that the donated funds are presented as an Air Canada e- gift card to the traveller. The rule is that the funds go towards the cost of an airline ticket and ancillary fees, excluding on-board drinks and travel insurance.
Travellers also cannot use the funds collected from Embarq for Air Canada vacation packages.
Selma Filali, Air Canada’s director of marketing communications said “No other airline is offering a similar product and more and more of our existing customers were purchasing our e-gift card to help friends and relatives with their travel dreams.”
In March 2015 the Canadian Tourism Commission published a report stating that the number of international millennial trips is expected to nearly double to reach about 300 million trips per year by 2020.
The airline says there are 800 profiles on line with requests for donations to attend family reunions, for volunteer work and to celebrate anniversaries.
There did not appear to be any donations posted at the time of this writing.