Looking Back at Rendez-vous Canada 2025

Canadian tourism businesses and international and domestic tour operators came together in Winnipeg, May 28-30, 2025, for Rendez-vous Canada’s 49th year. The annual travel trade event put on by Destination Canada and the Tourism Industry Association of Canada brings together international and domestic travel buyers and Canadian sellers to generate business.

Attending this event is a significant economic driver, generating millions in tourism business for our province. According to Destination Canada, last year’s event in Edmonton brought in approximately $65 million in business for tourism businesses across Canada.

Destination BC supported a delegation of BC tourism businesses, including 172 delegates representing 110 businesses. This included ten Indigenous-owned businesses through our continued partnership with Indigenous Tourism BC.

Our key goals for this year’s event were to highlight the economic benefits the FIFA World Cup 26TM coming to Vancouver could bring to communities across the province and generate industry excitement for the opportunities that it will bring. RVC provided a great opportunity to get not only our BC sellers excited, but the rest of the sellers and buyers as well.

Our “Team BC” approach began with a pre-function event welcoming our BC delegates, providing an opportunity to network with each other and generate excitement and alignment going into the trade show. Delegates also received FIFA swag to wear on the first day.

During Day 1 of the event, Team BC put on an energetic presentation during our sponsored luncheon where we shared our new “Beautiful Seats” campaign video, promoted opportunities related to the World Cup, and gave away official FWC26 VancouverTM scarves to a number of lucky attendees. The audience response was overwhelming positive and set the energy high going into the rest of the event.

We also promoted the World Cup through a number of activations at our “BC Basecamp” networking lounge. This included flags from around the world, the “Beautiful Seats” campaign integrated into the back wall, a sampling BC-inspired food and drinks, and a photo booth that turned photos of attendees into personalized trading cards.

The spirit of collaboration shared by our Team BC delegation proved to be the key to our success at RVC.  By showing up together, amplifying each other, staying aligned, and working together, we created a strong presence, supporting our Sellers more effectively and building meaningful momentum behind BC’s tourism story.