5Continents’ David Boigne: Travel with Personal Connections

David Boigne founded 5Continents in 2017 during a time when online booking was widespread, and AI technology was emerging. There was a trend towards automation in the travel industry, and Boigne saw that the human approach was becoming less prevalent in favour of technology.

 “My whole reason behind creating 5Continents was to focus on a human approach,” he told Travel Market Report Canada during a break at Travel Market Place Vancouver.

“It was a time when the industry was going strong towards technology and trying to automate as much as we can, with the least human intervention. I wanted to stick with having personal connections with the agents, to share our knowledge and make every single trip with our partners in destination. It was about keeping that human connection alive rather than going towards automation, which seemed a little bit against the grain at the time.”

That strategy is working well for Boigne who now employs 20 people in Canada, with additional support overseas. For their fiscal year that just began, 5Continents is already above total sales of last year and is continuing to grow. Boigne attributes that to the personal connection advisors and partners have with the company.

“You know, we’re not corporate, we’ve all been working together at some point in the last 30 years, so it’s more like a family. Everybody cares.  We don’t need to go through a corporate process to make a decision; we’re able to make quick decisions and ultimately, we want our travellers to be happy.  I think that’s what travel advisors enjoy about us, we are very much a big family.”

I experienced that family, human approach firsthand last year while on a FAM with 5Continents in Tunisia.  Only a few days into the FAM, I had a sudden death in my family and had to return home. I felt terrible having to leave, but that was alleviated after a message from David to not worry at all and to get home safely.  The advisors I was with quickly got on their laptops to arrange a last-minute flight while his team in destination sprang into action and arranged details to even have an escort through the airport. To this day, I remain friends with the 5Continents team in Tunisia.

When we suggest he must hand-pick personally his team in destination, he smiles.

“There was no question, you had to get home. That was our priority.  I’ve known some of our people in our destinations for 30 years,” he says. “We’re good, but there are other people that are good as well in the market as well. Ultimately, it comes down having that something special.”

Boigne extends those relationships to travel advisors and says the company is “big on one on ones” when it comes to trainings.

“Advisors can easily email us at sales@5continentsca.com for anything they need. Everything we do is tailor made, even our training.  If someone has a special interest in groups, but doesn’t do FIT, we’re not going to talk about FIT, we’re going to focus on groups. We can focus on specific theme; there’s no need to fit within a box with us.”

“It’s been awesome to be able to see all the support and trust from people who believed in us from day one, from DMC partners to travel agents; everyone who believed in me right from the beginning. And now it’s with the 20 of us, it’s very touching.”