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Toronto eclipses Rome for 3rd most booked city by Americans outside U.S.

toronto_skyline_at_duskPretty cool report the other day from hotels.com showed that Toronto is now the third most booked international city for U.S. travellers.

The report, which analyzed bookings on hotels.com, found that U.S. travel types booked the most rooms in London, followed by Paris. Toronto was number three, moving ahead of Rome. Which is pretty cool.

After Rome, in position five, was Vancouver, followed by Tokyo, Hong Kong, Montreal, Barcelona and Niagara Falls.

It’s a not a definitive study in that it only takes into account bookings on one website. But it’s encouraging for Toronto and Canadian tourism types, I’d think…

As for international visitors looking at U.S. destinations, the most booked hotels, in order, were in New York City, Las Vegas, Orlando, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu, San Diego, Chicago and Washington D.C. That’s two for Florida in the top four and three for California in the top eight, if you’re keeping track at home.

AIR CANADA ROUGE

Air Canada rouge, the discount/leisure carrier branch of Canada’s biggest airline, announced today that it’s taking over a whack of flights from Air Canada from Toronto and Montreal to the Caribbean.

irland_dublin_bruecke4Routes previously operated by Air Canada from Toronto and Montreal to Cuba, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Barbados, Haiti, Cancun and Tampa will be converted beginning this spring to Air Canada rouge service. Together with its previously announced 2014 summer schedule to Europe, Air Canada rouge plans to operate a total of 44 routes serving 28 popular vacation destinations, including continuation of its summer routes – Athens, Edinburgh and Venice – and new service to Barcelona, Dublin (see photo), Lisbon, Manchester, Nice and Rome.

The conversion of additional Caribbean vacation destinations to Air Canada rouge service represents an increase of 22 per cent more seats on these routes to the Caribbean this summer than last.

For those of you who like to keep score on these things, this means that both WestJet and Air Canada rouge will be competing on the Toronto-Dublin route. Good news for Ireland tourism, for sure, and possibly for Canadian consumers looking to save some dough…