Avanti Partners with VisitDenmark on Joint Educational Campaign for Travel Advisors on FIT

Introduces New Customizable Independent Vacation, Four New Hotels, and Two New Experiences in Denmark, featuring Odense, Birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen

 

Portland, Oregon, September 16, 2024 – Custom FIT* tour operator Avanti Destinations has just expanded its offering for advisors’ independent travel clients going to Denmark with a new customizable vacation, four new hotels, and two new add-on tours and experiences. 

 

Avanti has partnered with VisitDenmark to create two helpful tools for travel advisors: a new 42-page downloadable, shareable e-brochure https://www.flipsnack.com/779977E569B/denmark/full-view.html  and a 45-minute webinar scheduled for Thursday, October 3 at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7555590360723732573. The campaign is designed to educate advisors and their clients on the diversity of options for independent travel throughout Denmark. 

 

The e-brochure describes 18 hotels, 27 tours and experiences, and three complete, customizable vacations. Thirteen of the hotels are four-star, and 16 of the tours are private.

 

Fairy tale theme

 

Most of the new products are in Odense, third largest Danish city, located on the island of Funen, and the hometown of Hans Chistian Andersen, the famous author of children’s fairy tales such as The Emperor’s New Clothes, the Little Mermaid, the Ugly Duckling, and others. Funen is filled with quaint villages, museums, beaches, gardens, and castles, including Egeskov, one of Europe’s best preserved Renaissance moated palaces. Funen has a well-developed network of cycling paths.

 

To highlight the fairy tale theme, Avanti’s top-selling travel advisors will receive a book of thirteen of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales, a bookmark, and postcard inviting them to “create your own fairy tale adventure in Odense”. Advisors will have opportunities to win the book and other giveaways if they sign up on Avanti’s advisor portal to receive emails at https://www.avantidestinations.com/WebSignUpForAvantiNews.jsp#signUp

 

Avanti sells custom-crafted independent travel vacations exclusively through travel advisors, not directly to consumers. In Denmark, the company offers a total of three customizable FIT vacations, 50 three-, four- and five-star hotels, and 43 tours and experiences, including the latest additions.

 

Easy to get around, fairytales, castles, gastronomy

 

“Denmark is easy to explore by rental car, public transit, and bicycle because of its relatively small size, excellent transportation system and bridges, flat terrain, and extensive network of cycling paths”, said Paul Barry, Avanti’s CEO. “We have seen an increase in bookings to the Nordic countries in the past two years, as FIT clients look for less-touristed destinations in cooler climates.”

 

“Whether your clients are interested in castles, picturesque towns and countryside, museums, the latest environmental innovations, Vikings, museums, cycling, contemporary architecture, interior design, or New Nordic cuisine, Denmark is a wonderful vacation destination.  We are pleased to partner with VisitDenmark on this campaign to make advisors aware of the many reasons to visit Denmark generally and for going beyond Copenhagen,” added Barry.

 

“We are excited to be partnering with Avanti to promote more of Denmark’s lesser-known areas,” said says Ninna Seerup, Senior Travel Trade Manager at VisitDenmark. “Odense and Funen are magical places, and they are perfect for FITs. Visitors can enjoy castles, wineries, beautiful towns with cobbled streets and colorful houses, as well as amazing hotels right by the glistening waterside. The local archipelago is even perfect for island hopping.”

 

New vacation – Copenhagen and Self-Drive to and around Odense

 

The new recommended vacation, Danish Fairy Tales, combines Copenhagen with Odense, includes three days of rental car, and may be modified to include additional nights, experiences, transfers, and other Danish or Nordic destinations.   

 

A private transfer takes arriving clients from the airport to their Copenhagen hotel. A four-hour guided private tour of the city’s highlights is included, followed the next day by a full-day private guided excursion to Frederiksborg and Kronborg castles. Frederiksborg is the largest Renaissance castle in Scandinavia, built in the 17th century for King Christian IV on three islands and surrounded by a lake and formal gardens. Immortalized as Elsinore Castle in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Kronborg castle was built in the Renaissance style in the 16th century to control Oresund (The Sound), the waterway between Denmark and Sweden, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

Clients pick up a rental car to drive one hour and 50 minutes from Copenhagen to Odense. Included in the vacation: entrance tickets to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and House, as well as Funen Village, an open-air museum of 25 buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries; and a three-hour private guided tour of Egeskov Castle, one of the best-preserved moated Renaissance palaces in Europe.

 

Advisors may book their clients into any of Avanti’s wide selection of hotels in both cities, a total of 27 in Copenhagen, four in Odense, most of them four-star. Five properties in Copenhagen are five-star. Breakfast is included every day.

 

Two new add-on tours in Odense

 

For advisors creating a custom Danish vacation, not the itinerary described above, there are a total of seven tours available in Odense, two of which are brand new:

 

Private guided Egeskov Castle Tour (30-minute drive south from Odense) is a three-hour tour of this 16th century castle, surrounded by a moat. In addition to the castle itself which houses an impressive display of medieval arms and armor, there are several different style gardens, including a formal manicured Renaissance garden, a more natural style English garden, another with one of the world’s most extensive collections of fuchsia, and one of the world’s oldest hedge mazes. There is also an automobile museum.

 

Shared Old Little Belt Bridge walking tour – This tour takes clients, in safety harnesses, 200 feet above the Little Belt strait on the first bridge, opened in 1935, connecting the island of Funen with the Jutland peninsula. In 1970 a newer bridge was built, carrying auto traffic. The renovated old bridge is today used only for trains – and this tour. A guide points out the marine life in the strait, as well as telling the history of the bridge.

 

Among Avanti’s other tours that can be added to a customized vacation in Odense and Copenhagen – a total of seven in Odense, 26 in Copenhagen:

•       Private Copenhagen Dinner Cooking Class – clients learn to prepare a three-course meal of classic local dishes (four hours)
•       Private guided bicycle tour to Norrebor, one of Copenhagen’s trendiest neighborhoods (four hours)
•       Shared Grand Canal One-Hour Tour of Copenhagen – boat tour of new architecture and historic houses, churches, and castles (one hour)
•       Small Group Taste of Copenhagen Class: Culinary Walking Tour – Takes clients to Torvehallelrne market, where they can sample artisanal cheeses, liquors, preserves, then explore more of the city and taste open-face sandwiches, craft beers, and gourmet hot dogs (three hours)
•       Private Full-day Tour to Funen and Odense – For those who want to experience Funen, but stay in a Copenhagen hotel
•       Private Odense Walking Tour (four hours)
•       Shared Odense Aafart Boat Trip – relaxing cruise on the Odense River that has been in operation since 1882 (one hour)

 

Six Danish destinations

 

In addition to Odense and Copenhagen, four other Danish destinations are described in the e-brochure: Aalborg,  once the launching point for Viking exploration, today boasts a 1500-plus year old Viking burial site (Lindholm Hoje), 17th century half-timbered merchant houses, the Utzon Center of Nordic architecture (Utzon designed the Sydney opera house), repurposed industrial buildings that now house a trendy cultural center and street food market, and Regan Vest – the Danish Cold War museum in a 1960s’ bunker built nearly 200 feet underground to withstand nuclear war; Roskilde (20 miles west of Copenhagen), home to a Viking Ship Museum with five 1,000-year old recovered ships (clients can sail on replicas), Denmark’s most important church (12th century Roskilde Cathedral), and the Land of Legends open-air museum; Aarhus, another Viking-founded town, now a cultural capital for art, modern architecture, music, and New Nordic cuisine, an open-air museum with 75 historic buildings, vibrant nightlife, and the beach a short 10-minute bike ride from the city center; and Skagen, historic fishing port of red and yellow houses that was a favorite with the Skagen school of landscape painters in the 19th and 20th centuries because of its luminous skies, and is now an emerging ecotourism destination with birds, seals, and porpoises, vast expanses of sand and sea, a migrating sand dune, and Denmark’s freshest seafood.

 

For more information on independent travel in Denmark and Europe generally, or to book custom-crafted, multi-destination FIT travel 365 days a year throughout Europe, Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, the South Pacific, or Central and South America, log onto the recently revamped advisor portal https://book.avantidestinations.com or call 1-800-422-5053 to speak with an expert travel consultant.  

              

Since 1981, Avanti Destinations has been selling independent travel products and custom-crafted vacations in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the South Pacific, and Central and South America exclusively through travel advisors. The Portland, Oregon-based custom FIT tour operator offers a wide range of components to travel advisors only, including air, rail, rental cars, hotels, sightseeing/attractions, transfers and hard-to-find experiential travel options.  Avanti specializes in hand-picked, locally-owned hotels in both large and small cities and in connecting all the pieces of complex, multi-destination itineraries. The company also creates complete packages for custom groups of 10-plus passengers. For more information: https://book.avantidestinations.com.