Tui has confirmed it will replace the Thomson name with the Tui ‘powerbrand’ in two or “at the latest” three years, but First Choice will remain.
Group chief marketing officer Erik Friemuth told Travel Weekly: “We’ll migrate Thomson [to the Tui brand].
“We have not said we’ll have a single brand strategy, but a single brand strategy for our power brand. There are brands within Tui that differentiate themselves nicely. We’ll keep the VIP brand in Belgium, for example.
“We’re referring to the main tour operator brands in our source markets when we talk about migrating to the power brand Tui.”
Friemuth agreed First Choice was likely to be the biggest brand “left outside Tui”.
“Thomson is super-successful and the brand plays a part in this,” he added. “That is why we put the UK to the end of the process.
“Thomson offers by far the most mature customer experience in our company.”
But he insisted: “We want this process to be formalised in two or, at the latest, three years.”
He said: “It’s too early to talk about the execution of this in the UK. We’re at the planning stage; nothing has been decided yet.
“We’ll migrate [to the Tui brand] in the Netherlands [from October] and introduce it in France. Belgium will be next year, then the Nordics.”
Tui is already the brand in use in Germany, where consultancy Interbrand rated it the 24th-best German brand of 2015, up from number 30 in 2014, and assessed its value to have increased year on year to €1.4 billion.
Friemuth said: “It underlines what we’re doing. Power brands tend to have a higher valuation.
“In Ireland or the Nordics we have a pretty cluttered customer experience.We want to present one brand.
“Digitally, we’re aiming for one URL, Tui.com. This will help us to bemore competitive online.”