“That means going back to basics and redesigning upwards. This is not sales speak. It is happening and will continue to do so over the next five years.
“Passengers are experienced people who want to know that what they bought and what they get is exactly as we said it would be.
“Everybody’s brochure layouts are old fashioned and their pricing is now very confusing. Our 2000 brochures are already priced, but 2001 is going to see major innovations.
In the air
“Look at the airport experience and what we put people through is very stressful. It has to change.
“We can all do better. Look at Airtours three to five years ago, and look where they are now. We haven’t yet made the progress we would like to make, but we will get there.”
He is right of course. The package-holiday business is now a messy business that reflects 50 years of bits and pieces home improvements rather than a strong house designed for the 21st century.
Pricing presentation to the public is absurd. Airport check-in is a disgraceful, unplanned adaptation of 50-year-old scheduled airline practices rather than one for mass-transit leisure passengers.
Paying extra to guarantee that you sit next to your spouse in the aircraft is not a customer service, it is a dubious moneymaking wheeze.
And why, when I arrive in a resort, do I have to sit in a bar reeking of booze to hear some sales woman euphemistically called my rep, tell me about all the delights of the resort which she will show me on an excursion if I pay her extra?
Changing times
Vincent’s right to look at doing it better and differently, but having unfurled his colours on the mast, he will really have to perform, if only because Thomson’s acting chief executive Roger Burnell has similar views and is not far behind.
Clearly the trade is already behind it. Like-for-like sales show JMC to be about 35% up already year on year over the brands it has replaced, although it’s early days.
Of course, distribution is key for JMC. It has Thomas Cook, but if it is going to get close to the market share of Thomson and Airtours, which is clearly its aim, then it needs major support from the others. Vincent believes it would have been much more difficult if, instead of JMC, the Thomas Cook Holidays branding had been chosen for its mass-market holidays.
“I want to be number one in Thomas Cook and I believe we can be number two with the others,” he said.
“And I want to be much bigger in direct distribution, notably through the Internet.
“Distribution is moving from high-street shops, the so-called bricks and mortar retail, to clicks and mortar retail – that is the Internet and phone.
“Most industry leaders now accept the number of shops in the big chains will start to fall quite significantly over the next 10 years.”
JMC has been designed to appeal to those sorts of channels.
The brand and the colour look Internet like. It’s a very big part of the strategy I suspect.
Forging links for the future
It’s an overall strategy that simply cannot be allowed to fail especially as he now has very experienced German tour operators looking over his shoulder, which must add to the pressure.
Just how integrated the German and UK operations will become is not clear.Some think that JMC, as a brand, would very easily carry into other European marketplaces.
In the long term, Vincent admits Europeanisation is key.
“There is no question we are looking for synergies on a pan-European basis,” said Vincent. “I have active dialogue with all our German colleagues.
“Bed buying is a big issue and technology is another major area for potential cross-border co-operation.
“The group is now big in the UK, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe. Our customers and our businesses all have similar needs. We can’t simply look at ourselves in isolation any more than the car industry or the clothing industry can.”
Change is in the air and rightly so.
The older travel generation might not like it or believe in it, but Vincent and his generation must, and will, radically change the product and the way we do business.
If the product, its distribution and its performance aren’t radically redesigned over the next decade, package holidays as such will be a rapidly declining industry and one or two of the major companies will be rapidly declining businesses.
JMC may be different, but as my younger friends would say ‘different is where it’s at’.