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Independent agents’ dynamic packaging worth 1.5m holidays – Thomas Cook
Dynamic packaging by independent agents has been responsible for up to 1.5 million holidays in 2006, Thomas Cook estimates.
Thomas Cook holidays division executive director Ian Derbyshire, unveiling a new interactive website to capture growing numbers of people researching holidays online, described the growth in dynamic packaging as the biggest challenge traditional operators faced this year.
“People are going into independent travel agents to build their own packages,” he said while reviewing what he described as “one hell of a difficult year” for the travel industry.
The overall package holiday market ended 8% down year-on-year due to a combination of external events such as the bird flu scare, a late Easter, the World Cup, one of the hottest UK summers on record and the August UK airports security alerts.
Derbyshire said that a hoped for boost in bookings after England was knocked out of the World Cup failed to occur. He put this down to a surge in consumers buying plasma TVs rather than spending on holidays.
As a result the industry is gearing up for a “very aggressive” price-led post-Christmas booking period, he said.
While Derbyshire declined to reveal Thomas Cook’s plans, he said: “The prices post-Christmas will be exceptionally competitive.”
He revealed that the market for this winter is down by 13% while next summer is down by 17%. He predicted a 5% overall capacity cut for summer 2007 package holidays but said the package market had remained steady at around 16 million holidays for the last five years and would continue at a similar level for the next five years.
But big growth is coming from the independent sector, which has doubled is size in the last decade and will continue to grow in the next 10 years.
Thomas Cook intends to tap into the independent sector booked online with a number of initiatives, kicking off with the interactive site www.thomascookinspires.com which will feature footage from the company’s TV channel.
The holiday video clips will be downloadable onto PCs, iPods or mobile telephones free of charge.
“You can view and then have it downloaded to your iPod and show the rest of the family where you are going on holiday,” explained Derbyshire
*See linked stories.
Report by Phil Davies
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