Jeeves Travel (Weston) Inc. is a federally incorporated company founded in 1981 and acts as the parent company to several brands; corporate and educational divisions operate as Jeeves Travel, wholesale products are sold using Rainbow High Vacations, and conxity.com is the online retail agency.
Under the RHV name, Jeeves holds both retail and wholesale licenses from the Travel Industry Council of Ontario (TICO) . In addition, RHV holds an appointment as a travel agency from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) .
conxity.com has one location in the heart of Toronto’s gay neighbourhood at 506 Church Street, where it occupies the second and third floors. The company is owned and operated by 2 lesbians (Deb Parent and Liz Devine) and 4 gay men (Greg Kozdrowski, Pat Barry and John Wilkie, Rick Hurlbut). Several part time staff are employed in web, accounting, and sales roles.
Some History
Marshall-Fenn, an advertising and promotions company, founded Jeeves Travel (Weston) Inc. in 1981. Marshall-Fenn pioneered advertising campaigns which featured holidays as prizes for mail-in promotions (e.g.
send in a Kleenex box label with your address to win a trip to Barbados). Because MF was running so many of these types of promotions, they decided to set up their own travel agency and using the commissions earned on these trips to defray the operating costs of the parent company.
In April 1991 Ross Doswell and Greg Kozdrowski purchased Jeeves Travel from Marshall-Fenn. Prior to the purchase, Ross had worked at a travel agency on Church Street and felt that selling gay travel would be a viable niche market. Within a year of the purchase, Ross moved Jeeves from the MF offices at Davenport and Avenue Road to 100 Wellesley Street East to be closer to the burgeoning Church Street area. He also changed the operating name from Jeeves to The Travel Clinic.
From the time Jeeves moved to Wellesley Street, the company was building a strong GLBT clientele and moved to its current 506 Church Street location in 1996. By 1999 the company had grown to 5 full time employees and enjoyed a robust national reputation, changing its’ name to Rainbow High Vacations - claiming it’s role as Canada’s leading GLBT travel company.
Throughout the early part of this century, access to online information had spawned major developments in retail travel. Firstly, consumers were able to sidestep travel agencies altogether and have access to so much more information that, traditionally, had only been available to the travel agent. Additionally, gay men were among the earliest adopters of new technology and have been one of the first demographic groups to take up researching and booking travel online.
However, the LGBT specialty travel market was not well served by technology, and other established LGBT agencies and tour operators specialized in a relatively narrow range of product. The directors of Jeeves Travel determined that its unique combination of established profile, expertise, client base, supplier partnerships and breadth of product, strongly positioned the company to fill a specialty gap in full-service online travel retailing.
In 2006 it partnered with Travel Success Group (TSG) to develop a new online retailing product to integrate dynamic packaging, mainstream travel options, LGBT product, and social networking elements that speak to the “community identity” held by this market. Conxity.com was launched in late June, 2007 offering lesbian and gay travellers the world’s first one-stop online booking opportunity - unique for the way it combines social networking with efficient booking facilities of gay and non gay travel.
Travellers can connect to an international GLBT community to find travel partners, trade travel tips or share travel experiences and photos, peer reviewed listings and trip ratings, and a global event calendar.
