COMMENT: Indies need to take on the opposition
I’ve said this before many times over the last 10 to 20 years but nothing changes.
Thomson’s corporate goal was always to have such a strong brand that eventually they would not need other retailers/agents. They have generated a product range of quality hotels which can be sold by the hotelier exclusively to them on the UK market. They are hotels which obtain good review site ratings. Their airline tries to do the same with monopolising routes such as Cape Verde, so that despite clients having regular beefs with them, it’s often the only airline or operator to use for the product people want.
Thomson gets little poor feedback from agents any more since when agents such as ourselves complain to our consortia commercial departments about web prices being even less than Viewdata nett (I would be happy with £25 on a £2K booking but even that is getting harder to find) they simply say that they have tried to tackle TUI on this before to no avail, so they simply don’t bother anymore!
And as for dealing with Thomas Coook being the answer, their long term goal will be the same, they’re just slower off the starting gate than TUI, which is why they employed their new chief executive. Time and again I have said that the only answer is to either use luxury operators to dynamically package for you or do it yourself if you have the appropriate licences, and eventually that will not be competitive either, as we agents are not generally adding enough value to the product to make a reasonable commission and stay price competitive.
So then finally it is down to the consortia to obtain exclusive deals on our behalf which we can then sell in competition to TUI/TC and we become our own operator… with our own airline, our own luxury hotel and our own concierge service in resort. But the longer the delay, the fewer indies there will be left to make such a force in the market.
Visionary maybe, but if you want a long term future it could be the only one. For me it’s probably too late as I will be retired from retail within eight years and concentrating on our web-based niche holiday product, probably from home, God willing, and renting out our shop premises to a loan company like Wonga.
Oh what a world!
Derek Small is managing director of The Flight Centre (Greenwich)
Diane
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