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‘You need to be big, or you need to be specialist’
WTM 2004 Special: TUI needs one strong brand to compete with the likes of Expedia and Lastminute, says its chief executive for Northern Europe, Peter Rothwell.
Mr Rothwell was explaining to executives gathered at the Captains of Industry lunch on the first day of World Travel Market why the company had decided to ditch the Lunn Poly brand.
“One strong brand name is what you need to compete with other big brand names. We can only really support one name, like Lastminute or Expedia does.
“We can’t fritter on lots of names when one will do.”
He added: “We want people to believe that Thomson is a possibility for them and it is irrelevant whether they book through our shops, our call centre or the internet.”
In the audience was First Choice chief executive Peter Long, who agreed with Mr Rothwell. He said: “You need one strong customer franchise and one strong brand.”
Commenting on other recent TUI announcements concerning relocation and redundancies, Mr Rothwell said: “We are trying to get in line with the accelerating changes in the marketplace and we are making all these changes at once, which includes the unpopular change of headquarters from London to Luton and by making redundancies.”
He said increasing competition was forcing these changes. “When there were only four of us to choose from we could be inefficient and it was a lovely cosy business, but now there are so many more options and so much more capacity in the leisure market.”
He added: “You need to be very big or you need to be a specialist.”
The Captains of Industry lunch was attended by leading industry players including Brent Hoberman from Lastminute, Peter Long and Dermot Blastland from First Choice and Dinesh Dhamija from ebookers.
The opening speech was given by WTM event director, Fiona Jeffery, who spoke about the work of WTM’s official charity, Just a Drop, and encouraged diners to bid in an auction in aid of the charity. Among the prizes was two first class tickets with Gulf Air from London to Sydney, bought by Peter Long for £5,000, and a laurel Olympic Crown, donated by the Greek Tourist Board, which sold for £3,500.
Report by Ginny McGrath
Ginny McGrath
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