Thomson takes web route in major re-positioning

Friday, 02 Feb, 2007 0

Thomson is gearing up for a multi-million pound re-positioning campaign in April.

The aim is to change the company’s image from a package holiday provider to the leading web-based travel company.

The company has spent the past few months developing its technology to be able to offer every sort of leisure travel from its thomsonholidays.co.uk website.

Technology enabling consumers to search the entire travel database, as opposed to separate searches for packages, flight and hotel or flight-only, will be available in March with the campaign scheduled for the end of April across television, online and other media.

TUI UK new media director Graham Donoghue said: “We’re moving to a model where we blend all our third party inventory with all the package stuff and there will be one simple search. We have to start thinking the way customers think.”

He added that the technology was ‘leading edge’ and that no one else was doing it because it was so difficult.

Donoghue said the company wanted to become known as a retailer as well as a manufacturer so that consumers would begin to consider Thomson for all travel elements.

“We’re not saying packages are dead but the market is growing overall and in a segment people are not considering us for. Thomson is not just about two weeks in Majorca it’s also about chateaux in France and villas in Tuscany.”

As part of the strategy, Thomson is also reviewing its accommodation contracting and is likely to contract 50% less inventory as it brings in content from third party sources.

Donoghue said: “We want to offer a limited choice of our own so that we don’t have all the cost of owning the assets. We want to be a manufacturer but it’s a challenge because we can’t be seen to be force-feeding the consumer our product so we’ll let them choose but make them aware of the value they get from Thomson.”

by Linda Fox

Phil Davies

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