With Hôtel de Glace welcoming more than 80,000 winter visitors each year, Village Vacances Valcartier has built a strong international draw. GetYourGuide helps the resort reach travelers from markets including the U.S., Germany, Belgium, and Australia.
Key Takeaways
Keep giving visitors new reasons to come back. Village Vacances Valcartier grew from a single snow slide into a major resort by continually adding new attractions, accommodation, and seasonal experiences.
Use a distinctive experience to reach beyond your home market. Hôtel de Glace, North America’s only ice hotel, helped turn a largely local audience into one that now includes more than 100,000 winter visitors each year.
Give each sales channel a clear job. Valcartier focuses its direct business on local customers while using GetYourGuide to reach travelers from markets including the U.S., Germany, Belgium, and Australia.
Judge commission against the business it brings you. Frederic accepts the cost of B2B distribution because, in his words, “it’s going to bring volume.”
Back the channels that prove themselves. Rather than working with every OTA, Frederic prefers to focus on partnerships that consistently bring bookings. His advice to another supplier considering GetYourGuide was simple: “Just go.”
When Frederic Johansen joined Village Vacances Valcartier as Sales Manager in 2015, the resort still moved with the seasons. Summer revolved around the outdoor water park, winter around the snow tubing park, and there was little to bring visitors in between.
A year later, the resort opened Hôtel Valcartier, indoor water park Bora Parc, and Hôtel de Glace. The expansion brought a very different audience. “Everything changed drastically in 2016,” Frederic says. “Hôtel de Glace changed the game because it opened the international market. Before, it was mostly local visitors. After that, we definitely became much more international.”
That shift created a new sales opportunity. Local visitors already knew Valcartier and largely booked direct, while travelers planning trips from further afield were harder to reach. After a chance meeting with a GetYourGuide representative at a Calgary trade show, Frederic saw a way to put the resort in front of those international visitors.
“The main reason why I started this partnership was for visibility,” he says. “GetYourGuide helps us reach clients that we can’t reach.”
We spoke to Frederic about turning international interest into bookings, why he prefers to focus on distribution channels that deliver volume, and how Valcartier keeps finding new reasons for visitors to return.
What makes Village Vacances Valcartier a destination in its own right today?
What makes us different is the variety we have on site. You have restaurants and bars, Bora Parc, Hôtel de Glace, the snow tubing park, ice skating, a spa, and the hotel. It really is like a little village. You can come here and have everything in one place.
Hôtel de Glace is also something people cannot find anywhere else in North America. If you want a similar experience, you have to go to places like Sweden, Finland, or Norway. That gives us something very different to offer, especially during the winter.
How did becoming a more international destination change the way you approached sales?
Before Hôtel de Glace, most of our visitors were much closer to home. We had people from Quebec, Montreal, and Ontario, some visitors from the East Coast of the U.S., and school groups. Once we started attracting people from much further away, the way we thought about sales had to change as well.
My job is focused on B2B, so for me the question became: how do we put Valcartier in front of people who are planning a trip to Quebec from somewhere else? We already had a strong local market. The opportunity was to reach people before they arrived here.
Why did GetYourGuide make sense as a way to reach those travelers?
The funny thing is that the partnership started very simply. I met Philip from GetYourGuide at a trade show in Calgary. We were at a happy hour, having a glass of wine or a beer, and we exchanged business cards. I followed up afterward, and that was really how everything started.
At that point, we were only beginning to work seriously with OTAs for attraction tickets. GetYourGuide was pretty much the first one for us. I could see the value because when people travel, they go online and search for what to do. I do exactly the same thing myself.
When I went to Iceland, I searched for the best activities, and GetYourGuide appeared. Someone planning a winter trip to Quebec City is going to behave in much the same way.
How do direct bookings and GetYourGuide fit into your wider sales strategy?
For me, the roles are quite clear. If somebody lives here and already knows Valcartier, I want them booking through our website. With GetYourGuide, I am looking for people coming from outside our usual market.
You have to accept the commercial side of that. Let's be honest, with B2B you leave some money on the table because there is a commission. That's how it works. But if that channel brings you volume from customers you would have struggled to reach yourself, there is value in that.
I also don't think we need to be everywhere. We work with very few OTAs for attraction tickets. If something is working well, the bookings are coming in, and the support is good, I prefer to focus on that instead of trying to work with every platform.
What has surprised you most about the booking volume you can generate through GetYourGuide?
The volume is probably the biggest surprise. Our winter season is short, around 11 or 12 weeks, so when you look at how much business can come through during that period, the numbers are surprisingly high.
I see the bookings coming in one by one, so I can also see where people are coming from. The U.S. is a big market for us, particularly for Hôtel de Glace and snow tubing, but bookings come from many different places.
The overnight experience at Hôtel de Glace is another area I want to keep developing. GetYourGuide doesn't normally sell hotel rooms, but in this case the overnight stay is an experience in itself, so we can sell it through the platform. I'm always looking at how we can grow that further.
What do GetYourGuide reviews tell you about the guest experience?
I check the reviews quite often. I don’t read every single one, but it’s important for me to know what people are saying and what’s happening when they arrive.
Sometimes it’s something very practical. Maybe someone says the GetYourGuide counter was difficult to find, or they arrived and it was closed. Those comments help you see where the experience could be clearer for the customer.
Of course, you’re never going to get five stars every time, but overall the feedback has been good. For me, the important thing is knowing what’s going on and paying attention when customers point something out.
How do seasonality and the weather shape the way you plan for growth?
Temperature is probably the biggest challenge in our business. We are completely dependent on it. If you have two weeks of rain in summer, you feel it. When you have seven days of sunshine and temperatures around 30°C, you can have thousands and thousands of people coming every day.
Winter has the same problem in a different way. We need a certain temperature before we can even start constructing Hôtel de Glace in November. If it isn't cold enough, we cannot start. Thankfully, Quebec City normally gives us the kind of winter we need.
We also have quieter periods in April, May, October and November when many of the attractions are closed. That's why we have to keep thinking about what comes next. We look at new attractions, new products, our packages and our pricing. Some projects had to stop during COVID, and there are still ideas we want to bring back. There is always something new coming.
What would you tell another attraction deciding how much to invest in online distribution?
A couple of months ago, another supplier actually called me with exactly that question. It was a new company, and they had never worked with GetYourGuide before. They wanted to know about the numbers, the service, and if we had problems.
My answer was very straightforward: just do it.
Of course you pay a commission. That's part of B2B. What matters is what you get in return. If it brings customers and volume, it works.
That's also how our own partnership started. One conversation at a trade show, one business card, and then I followed up. You never really know how big something can become when it starts.
