End of Destina?
 

Last spring I was complaining about Destina and how they Fed Exed required paper tix at my expense. Looking at Destina this year, it seemed exactly the same as aircanada.com for booking. I had a hunch. So I booked a ticket on AC with required paper. Surprise - it came by regular mail (no charge) and the sticker on the inside said "Destina.ca". So either Destina.ca became aircanada.com or vice versa but the FedEx stuff is over. The Destina lurker, Dr. Evil should let us know. Of course, I could have missed the news. Post your response. It's funny how they do what we say should be done but tell us first how wrong we are.

True that Destina is effectively gone, just a carbon copy of AC.com.

But a good thing it's not. Indeed, you could book all sorts of itineraries on destina which you cannot on AC or on the dead body destina. Which are limited to destinations served either directly or as codeshare by AC.

Go book FRA-FCO or FRA-Alghero on them; both of which I at some point in the past got from Destina. Good luck. Guess what, you cannot anymore.

If Destina were gone, I'd be celebrating with ten bottles of Tokaji.
Unfortunately, what appears to have happened is an unfortunate cross-fertilization of the AC website with Destina spores. This means that the Destina folk have gotten their claws into the AC website (repeat AC VP IT is Destina head). Which, to me, means that everythin that was going on at Destina, is now going on on the AC website. I have accordingly advised friends considering booking on the AC website to either do use the reservations call center, or book AA. After hearing what I had to say about Destina, believe me, they don't want anything to do with anything associated with it.
As for Dr Evil, he can kiss my you know what, and knows it.

Destina as a full travel site RIP
 

There was a fairly innocuous message from Destina last fall that they were moving to a "new improved" site blah blah blah. The new site shares the engine with AC so one of the "improvements" is that you can no longer book flights with AC's competition although there is limited *A booking. I guess the AC brain trust figured out that it didn't make a ton of sense to give people Aeroplan points to book on their competitors' flights.

It does retain wide car rental and hotel booking functionality (now also part of AC site "powered by Destina") and they CLAIM to offer the lowest hotel rates, but I usually find I can get better rates (especially internationally) at Expedia with their "Expedia Special Rates". The good news if you care is the hotel booking engine is much better than the old one Destina used.

Yes, Destina is dead... hotel reservation is out-sourced
 

A few weeks ago, greedy with the Aeroplan point bonus, I made a hotel reservation on-line at www.destina.ca. My travel plan changed and this morning, I tried to cancel the reservation. As this must be done manually, I called the 1-866-871-4747 toll free no. listed on the web site. I was then instructed to call another toll free no., 1-800-387-9005 and the person answering the call responded by "Thank you for calling Hotelguide.......", an on-line discount outfit www.hotelguide.com. Initially, they had a little problem location my file until they found out that I did not make the reservation through the www.hotel.ca web site but Destina. The reservation was cancelled without any fuss. A confirmation no. was provided and was followed up with an e-mail. The process was quite efficient and pleasant.

I think Destina is dead when simple hotel reservation service is in fact "out sourced" to someone else and unlike expedia and travelocity, air reservation can only be made on AC.........

Destina was a bad idea, is a bad idea, and should be killed officially in case anybody is dumb enough to actually try and use it.

I gave up on it ages ago, when I couldn't get a multi-segment trip to price correctly. I shudder at the thought of actually booking hotels and cars along with air. IMO Destina was/is another failed AC IT initative. I think I would be much happier if the resources allocated to Destina could be re-allocated to getting the fare buckets right and to ensuring that upgrades get posted to AP correctly.

One experiment that IMO did succeed, but was killed anyway was the Personal Ticket Office, which was the precurser to Destina....now that I could get behind!

DF

Thank you DF. I and so many users who tried Destina were so dumb to have forgotten to ask you for your advice in advance.

Sorry. Nothing Personal. Mea Culpa

DF

I'm sure that you didn't mean it. I wasn't serious but apology accepted!

I think we both agree that Destina is on life support waiting to be unplugged.

Hopefully it will be after my court date (next monday) and after I get any money that I win.

More Destina outsourcing?
 

I booked through Destina a two night stay at Le Capitole in YQB (nice place by the way) and upon checkout, my bill showed an address of:

Travelnow.com
4124 South McCan Court
Springfield, MO, 65804

A quick look at travelnow's website shows that they partner with a whole host of other service providers. Destina is not listed as one. Does Destina simply not have the capacity to book a reservation anymore? (at all?)

Was it a prepaid hotel rate?

They've been working throguh TravelNow for their "deals" at least since the date of the orginal message was posted in March. Note that they promise the "lowest" rate, but I was booking a hotel in YYC and it was considerably cheaper on Expedia than on Destina.

I believe the reason they partnered with TravelNow was to overcome the reality of Expedia's Special Rates always beating the pants off what Destina offered, especially outside Canada.