The sceptics said it would never work. My partner Denis Strauss and I started the project in 1994. In April 1998, the TVTravel Shop was launched. Initially it was only on satellite for five hours daily.
Some 20 months later we are broadcasting 24 hours a day on satellite and cable and we are received in over seven million homes and reach 40% of all holidaymakers.
We now have 440 call-centre staff. Our first year’s turnover was £72m. Barclays Private Equity and Kuoni Travel have taken stakes in the company with an injection of over £20m pounds in new equity.
We are now writing new business at the rate of £1m daily. Between Christmas and 14 January 2000, our share of the holiday package market was 4% and the estimated turnover in the current financial year should be in the region of £200 million pounds.
Technology and new methods of distribution will change the face of the travel industry over the next five years.
My belief is that by 2005, over 40% of all holiday bookings will be taken via TV, the Internet, Teletext and interactive digital television.
We will be looking at a world where we will be able to download all our programmes from the Internet onto the TV screen.
You will be able to see destinations and hotels at the click of a button. Bookings will be made by credit card from customers’ armchairs direct into systems without any human interference.
Agents will become pan-European in the same way as tour operators already quickly becoming.
Our TV programmes are already seen in every European country. We have the availability of broadcasting simultaneously in eight different languages.
Let us also not forget mobile phones. This year you will be able to navigate the Web on your mobile phone screen.
Digital television, the Web and the telephone will all over the next few years be able to interact with each other.
Science fiction?Armageddon for the travel agent?It doesn’t have to be.
What is certain, however, is all agents will have to rethink the way they sell travel. The majority of customers will still prefer to book their holiday face to face. Travel agents are changing.
Over the last few years we are seeing travel counsellors working from home agent Web sites.
Agents will have to be available when the customer wants them.
Thomas Cook has already started this by having evening appointments with customers. It’s a brave new world for travel agents. The prize for those getting it right is enormous – so are the risks.