Neilson’s new executive chairman has outlined plans to nearly double the operator’s trade sales now it is no longer owned by Thomas Cook.
Independent travel agents are expected to make up a far bigger share of sales than in the past for the beach club and ski operator, sold in November last year to private equity firm Risk Capital Partners.
Executive chairman Richard Bowden-Doyle, former managing director of Thomson and Lastminute.com, said a trade distribution strategy would be in place by the end of June.
Part of this will include ditching Neilson’s online discounts for direct clients. “We are looking to have the same prices for the trade and online,” he said.
A drop in the operator’s Thomas Cook sales – currently 60% of trade bookings – is inevitable now the company is independent, he added.
“It would be naive for us to assume our trade business is in the bag. There is mileage to work more with smaller agencies. Our Thomas Cook business will drop anyway because integrated groups try to support their own products.”
Currently, 85% of Neilson’s summer bookings are direct, but Bowden-Doyle is targeting an increase of at least 10% in trade sales for this part of the business.
“I’d be happy if our summer direct sales fell to 75% in the next 18 months,” he said. “There are a large number of small to mid sized agents that would not have worked with Neilson before because of the Cook link and because of the inflexibility of the systems.”
He said the company was “weeks away” from offering a multi-channel distribution system allowing agents to sell via web feeds, viewdata or by telephone.
The company is in early talks with consortia and recruiting for a new role to head trade sales. It has appointed Andy Furlong, marketing and e-commerce director of Europcar, as marketing director. Furlong starts in June.