The TravelMole Interview: Helen Baker, Lastminute.com
Lastminute.com UK managing director Helen Baker has told TravelMole that she believes the company’s competition is not just other online travel or leisure firms, but big brands such as McDonalds, Orange or Tesco, because that is the sort of brand success it wants to emulate.
Ms Baker believes that the Lastminute brand name is one of its key strengths. She says: “I see our rivals as being people like Coca-Cola or McDonalds, those sort of absolutely huge brands. We believe one of our greatest strengths is the power of our brand and it is also one of the biggest barriers to entry for new companies. People have underestimated the importance of branding in people’s perceptions.”
One reason why Lastminute is already such a huge brand name is the amount of publicity – both good and bad – it received both during and after its flotation two years ago. Shares in the company fell from a high of 487.5pence to a low of 18.5pence, and after being the darling of the press Lastminute was prominent in negative articles about the bursting of the dot com bubble.
But Ms Baker insists that even if the Lastminute team had to do the IPO all over again they would not do anything differently. She says: “We have had to take the rough with the smooth. There have been negative articles. But we had a very successful IPO, we got a huge amount of publicity which gave us a lot of brand awareness and a lot of cash in the bank.”
And she points out that the Lastminute team have remained focused on their business plans, which she says are not reflected in the company’s share price – which currently stand at 61pence. She says: “The business performance and the share price performance have been very separate. We have done really well. We have met and exceeded market expectations every single quarter we have been in business. Ever since our inception NetValue has put us as number one [among travel sites] which is pretty impressive for a very young brand.”
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