Thomson reveals TUI rebrand cost ‘tens of millions’
Thomson admitted that its rebrand to TUI has cost the company ‘tens of millions’ of pounds, which will be spread over three years.
However, the company has retained the First Choice and Crystal Ski brands after market research revealed that it would have lost the majority of their customers if they had adopted the TUI brand.
Marketing director Jeremy Ellis said: "Many of those customers wouldn’t have come to TUI with us, they just wouldn’t. We know this from lots and lots of market research we have carried out over the past three years.
"First Choice is a very different brand to Thomson and we couldn’t have named them both TUI. Crystal is also a strong brand on its own and TUI Ski couldn’t offer what Crystal offers."
Thomson has also launched a new name for its cruise line, Marella, rather than rebranding it TUI Cruises. "There already is a TUI Cruises, which is a different proposition to what we are offering with Marella," said Ellis.
The operator has been running a TV campaign about the name change for the past four weeks and has already seen a four-fold increase in awareness of the TUI brand, said Ellis.
One of the most difficult aspects of the name change has been online, where the company risks losing a lot of traffic from today when Thomson.co.uk becomes tui.co.uk. Customers who use the Thomson URL will be automatically redirected to tui.co.uk, but TUI will not feature as high as Thomson in natural search results.
As a result, the company will have to buy more traffic online with paid adverts on search engines like Google to compensate. "Half of our traffic came from SEO (search engine optimisation) but today we are expecting to see a different mix of traffic, we might have to buy 70%, but in other markets where they have adopted the TUI brand, the recovery has been quicker than expected," said managing director Nick Longman.
"There will be a gradual erosion of our online traffic, followed by a gradual build-up, and we are confident we have a good plan in place."
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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