Thomas Cook has revamped its Signature brand as a more flexible high end offering, encompassing the existing Style brand.
The intention is to have a clear ‘good, better, best’ range of brands, with Airtours in the value spectrum, Thomas Cook as the core middle and luxury products within the adapted Signature model.
“A lot of these customers want to feel a bit different to the ordinary Thomas Cook customer”, said Stefanie Berk, product and yield director at Thomas Cook.
“They consider themselves Signature clients rather than Thomas Cook, but they like the security of the operator in the background as a safety net.
“We felt the new brand needed to be more separate, that’s why it has a strong new logo.”
Signature by Thomas Cook has traditionally been a long-haul, scheduled range and it was repositioned last year to encompass the top end of the Style product, which became Signature European Beaches.
Signature has now evolved to include flexible flights available through Thomas Cook or other airlines that serve the destinations offered by the operator, with 1,000 properties to choose from.
Among 80 new properties are the Burj Al Arab, Dubai, and Fontainebleau, Miami. Some of Thomas Cook’s own, mainly Sentido, properties will feature.
Initially, the long-haul programme will offer complete flexibility of airlines, with this due to be extended to the short-haul products in the coming months.
Signature will also have a new logo; the platinum lettering of the previous branding has become dark brown and the font changed.
The Thomas Cook ‘sunny heart’ logo has also been removed from brochure covers to help differentiate the brand from others in the range.
Thomas Cook is training 100 agents in its retail network to be Signature experts as part of its Signature Extras programme.
So far 50 of these agents have had destination and customer service training in Peterborough, with the remaining 50 to be trained soon.
Berk said Cook was also considering training third-party agents but details are yet to be finalised.