Thomson to prosper – but don’t believe all those predictions. Comment by Jeremy Skidmore

Thomson recently treated us to its view of the future.

This time there was no talk of holidaying in special pods or segregated beaches for noisy holidaymakers, which were predictions from a previous think tank. Instead, we heard how half of all holidays would be booked online within four years.

The current rate of growth makes this possible, but the question for the trade is, who will be best placed to take advantage of this?

A few years ago, you wouldn’t have put much money on it being Thomson. The ponderous old giant was miles off the pace compared to dotcom players such as lastminute.com or expedia.com.

But although it didn’t exactly enjoy “first mover advantage”, Thomson has proved that when you get your act together, people will book with a brand they trust.

Look at its low-cost flights operation. It was launched several years too late, but because people are familiar with the Thomson name, they are comfortable booking its products over the Internet when they become available.

So, I agree with some of the comments from the TTI Spring Conference, where many concluded that the big four could still be the biggest winners of the change in booking patterns.

Holidayandmore.com general manager Vic Darvey is also correct when he says that lastminute.com started with a blank piece of paper, rather than having to turn a business around. In addition, lastminute.com has a brand that everyone knows and recognises.

But he also crowed that lastminute.com was one of the biggest commission contributors to agents in the industry. Correct. But ask yourself why a company that started out as a pure online retailer has ended up doling out millions of pounds each year to agents to support its products.

The simple reason is because it can’t make enough money simply by selling directly via its own website. If it could, it would, because that’s a hell of a lot of cheaper than going through travel agents. As the Americans say, do the math!

Meanwhile, Thomson admitted that not all its predictions are correct. A few years ago it thought bookings through the television would grow at an enormous rate and, although it is still an important medium, those views have been revised.

It also believes travel agents need to adapt to survive. We all agree, but I’m not convinced by the claim that retailers will sell pre-holiday gym packages and foreign language courses in future to make up for the loss of holiday sales.

Surely, if people are happy enough to book an expensive holiday over the internet, they’ll book a language course online.

Thomson is also going back to the future with its prediction that travel agents will become more flexible, work with laptops and sell holidays from home.

Haven’t Travel Counsellors being doing that for the past 10 years?