Cosmos announces plans for trade website
Cosmos has confirmed it will launch an agent-only bookable website early next year, ending its reliance on Viewdata for trade bookings.
The operator, which last week cut prices through the trade by 5% to make its packages more competitive, said the move away from Viewdata would enable it to grow faster.
"It will allow us to be more agile, more responsive," said sales director Gary Anslow. "When we get new product or negotiate a new rate we can load it quickly on to the website and offer it to agents immediately."
The agent-only website will be introduced in the first quarter, after the end of the peak booking period so any technical glitches can be ironed out before the next busy period.
Cosmos saw a 10% increase in passenger numbers to 911,000 this year to the end of October and it is aiming to carry over a million in the current financial year.
The operator will launch its biggest ever post-Christmas multi-channel advertising campaign on Boxing Day after significantly increasing its marketing spend for summer 2015 holidays.
It follows a similar push last December, when it admitted awareness of the brand was lower than it should have been. Consumer research showed there were "positive feelings towards the brand" but spontaneous awareness was lower than expected given the operator’s 51 year history.
Since then, a MORI poll showed in April that Cosmos was the fourth most recognised brand. "That puts us in a position other companies would pay millions to achieve," said Anslow. "We have a great opportunity to capitalise on the latent strengths of the brand."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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