TravelMole Q&A with Miles Morgan, Thomson

Following Thomson’s revelations about its online future, sales and marketing director Miles Morgan spoke to Bev Fearis to answer some of the questions raised, many of them from Travelmole subscribers.

Q. What would you say to your shop staff who are worried about the future of their jobs?

A. We will still need a high street presence. It’s still important to us and we still believe in it. The internet shouldn’t be a threat, it’s an opportunity. It will allow our shops to book so much more. We are currently piloting a web-based booking system in 60 of our shops, which is basically what our customer sees with minor adaptations. Depending on the feedback we get, we expect to roll it out across the network in the next 12 months. It’s a booking system with far more content than they’ve got currently and because it’s web-based I hope it’s not going to be too tricky for them to use it.

Q. Is Thomson’s share of online business increasing because sales in its shops are decreasing?

A. No, our shops continue to be profitable. We’re not getting rid of the high street shops. We still think there is a future. We place great value on our shops – they are fantastic billboards and that kind of presence would cost an awful lot of money – for us it’s free. It’s a long way from the end of the road for our high street business.

Q. Isn’t it not so much a case that the internet is replacing agents, as much as disgruntled agents are refusing to book Thomson or hand out brochures for clients booking direct?

A. That might well be the case in some cases, but we’ve got 750 shops in every area with a large population so we are very well served outside our internet business.

Q. Is the internet just a route for dumping last minute stock?

A. No, it’s not. We sell well across the board on the internet – early and late.

Q. If customers are sufficiently motivated to buy a holiday over the internet, why aren’t they dynamically packaging it themselves?

A. We know that’s the way it is moving, so we are making all of our product available in dynamic packaging. We’ve always sold 4 million package holidays each year, but the internet allows us to sell any number of dynamic packages on top of this. These can, of course, be booked by our shops too so the developments online don’t mean our shops lose out, they will in fact be able to sell more.

Q. What percentage of Thomson holidays are sold online, without actually speaking to anyone?

A. Around 85-90% of our online bookings are pure online bookings, with no human intervention

Q. What percentage of holidays sold online are fulfilled electronically, and not sent in the post?

A. Again, 85-90%.

Q. What percentage of the online customers don’t use a printed brochure?

A. Brochures are still very much required and valued by our customers. Many of them have got the brochure with them when they book. That’s why the shops are such great avenues for us. Customers will still be able to get them from our shops, but we can also collect a lot of data from our customers – their names and addresses – from both our shops and the web, and we can of course exploit that by sending out brochures, or emailing electronic brochures.

Q. What proportion of the 50% sold online is being bought by travel agents online?

A. That’s difficult to monitor, but we would of course be happy if agents are booking through our site.