TUI campaigns to get more online customer feedback

Thomson and First Choice are urging more customers to share reviews of their holiday online.

The operators made the appeal after an independent survey of 917 people showed half say they use online reviews in planning their own breaks.

A separate poll of another 800 Thomson and First Choice customers found 70% use online reviews.

"We’ve found that only a quarter of people post reviews of their holiday on independent review sites, and just a fifth post comments on travel companies websites,” said Dermot Blastland, managing director of parent TUI Travel UK & Ireland.

“Of course these answers reflect the views of people who are already comfortable online and reflect the fact that we’ve embedded TripAdvisor and customer comments into the Thomson website, but it’s clear more people are reading than posting reviews and we’d like to see this balance changed and encourage more travellers to share their thoughts, whether those are good or bad.”

The research found 80% of people say they mostly trust the reviews they read, although a fifth are sceptical saying they have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

They are sceptical for three main reasons:

– they expect reviews to be written by people who are complaining

– they think people’s standards are so different that what suits one person doesn’t necessarily suit another

– or they expressed concern that the reviews may have been written by people with an interest in the organisation being reviewed.

Later this year Thomson.co.uk will add reviews from Holidays Uncovered giving customers access to 150,000 more independent reviews. Thomson already has more than 50,000 customer comments on its website and introduced TripAdvisor in 2007.

First Choice will launch customer reviews on its website in 2010.

This week Thomson launched a dedicated customer web page listing what the company is working on to improve holidays and will ask customers to email suggestions.

It also plans to set up a research panel of 800 to get even more regular feedback

In addition, a new UK call centre has been set up to answer consumer questions before they leave on holiday.

The 2009 Thomson and First Choice annual trends report includes survey results from a nationally representative independent online survey completed by 917 people and was carried out by eDigitalResearch in July 2009.

A further 800 Thomson and First Choice customers also completed an online survey over the same period.

By Bev Fearis