Thomas Cook is to extend the number of hotels offering its Choose Your Favourite Sunbed initiative from 30 to 50 after a “successful trial”.
It had been introduced for this summer with customers able to pay €25 per sunbed, per stay to secure their sunbed before they go on holiday.
Chief executive Peter Fankhauser said that 50% of the sunbeds that were able to be booked in advance have been snapped up this summer already.
“We can see that there is demand from our customers,” he said. “It’s been a successful trial and it’s our job to roll it out at scale this summer.”
But Fankhauser said it was not possible to add the feature at all hotels that Cook sells.
“It depends on the situation and the location of the hotels,” he said. “It’s something we are slowly rolling out to our own-brand hotels.”
He also explained that Cook wanted to keep some sunbeds free for anyone at the hotel to use, as not all customers “want the certainty” of their own sunbed.
And he said customers were happy to pay the extra money for the “additional service”.
Fankhauser also revealed that Cook’s other innovation in personalisation, its Choose Your Room feature, had been used on 13,500 bookings so far.
More: Thomas Cook to let holidaymakers pre-book their sunbeds