Thomas Cook reveals wave of new products
Thomas Cook will sell more winter sun holidays, dynamically-packaged city breaks, budget quality hotels and room and flight only deals as part of its turnaround strategy.
In the next two years it plans to introduce the first wave of new products, including more dynamically-packaged holidays.
Group chief executive Harriet Green also revealed today that the company was developing 48 products specifically based around women and children.
She said the decision was based on the results of an extensive in-house survey which showed that 70% of all holidays were booked by women and that pester power from children was a deciding factor in where families went on holiday.
The survey of 18,000 travellers carried out late last year had revealed Cook needed to plug other gaps in its portfolio, it said, for instance for city breaks that are growing but form only a small part of its business.
As part of its new growth strategy, led by UK chief executive Peter Fankhauser, Cook also plans to add more of it popular concept hotels by 2015, a move which will be funded by the closure of underperforming or unprofitable hotels – even those that are popular with customers.
It said 24% of its agent contract spend is being renegotiated with a view to achieving better terms on quality, reliability and better value.
Its international hotel concepts, such as Sunwing, Sentido and the new Smartline earn, on average, twice the margin of its other hotels, it said. "We have well developed plans in place to grow the number of passengers in our concept hotels four-fold in the next five years."
Its online brands and websites will be reduced to just three customer facing websites in the UK and one in Germany, and it will increase investment in offline advertising and search optimisation and invest in customer engagement tools with the aim of achieving the highest share of bookings online for a major tour operator, reaching over 55% in the UK by the end of 2015.
Creating a single group-wide airline segment, making Thomas Cook airline the 11th largest in the world, will deliver improved customer service and cut costs, it said. However, it is also looking to further utilise third party airlines following its decision to contract thousands of seats from easyJet this summer.
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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