IT WAS my pleasure to attend the Institute of Travel and TourismOdyssey Awards dinner on March 25.
It was good to see British Airways Holidays managing director Roger Heape accept theprestigious ITTOdyssey award for hisoutstanding services to the travel industry.
However, I was concerned to hear Roger’s views on the multiples. While I agreed with his view that multiples are distributors, I think he was mistaken with his comments referring to Thomas Cook; these mistakes occurredparticularly with reference to the transparency issue. Thomas Cook overbrands all its owned products (ie Flying Colours, Club 18-30,Sunworld, Thomas Cook etc) as Thomas Cook Holidays in all its outlets. Therefore, there is no transparency issue as customers are absolutely clear about who’s holiday they are buying.
Thomas Cook’s Retail’s sales policy is to sell the right product to the right client, if thishappens to be our own product, then we will sell this first.
Should we not have the right product in our own portfolio we will sell other products. We have and hopefully will continue to have good levels of sales for all BAHproducts.
Mike Beaumont, commercial director, Thomas Cook Retail, Peterborough