The Midcounties Co-operative plans to market its holidays to more customers who use its other services, such as food shops.
Currently, the group has more than 700,000 members but only about 5% of them buy travel from Midcounties.
Furthermore, only a fifth of the group’s transactions is with its members so the company wants to convert more customers to sign up for membership.
Sara Dunham, chief officer of travel and leisure services at The Midcounties Co-operative, said the group ran a pilot scheme last summer with holiday offers for customers who shop in its food stores.
She said Midcounties’ members are an “obvious” opportunity for marketing as “they are already engaged with us as a brand and a society”.
“Making sure we’ve got the right proposition and offerings for them is a real opportunity,” she told a Travel Weekly webcast.
“Perhaps we haven’t been helping them find the deals and the offers that we’ve got.
“A pilot was done where members collect stamps through food and can then redeem them on offers for holidays.
“We’re hoping to announce more about that in our AGM in May.
“We need to demonstrate the value and articulate that better for our members to enable them to engage and see the benefit from it.”
Phil Ponsonby, group chief executive at The Midcounties Co-operative, said the group can improve its digital services to reach more of its 700,000 members who may not live close to one of its travel agencies.
He also highlighted how many Midcounties customers are not actually members: “Only one in five of our transactions as a business is with our members – so while we’ve got 700,000 members, we’ve got more people shopping with us in food and utilities who are not members.
“Our overall strategic aim is to increase the number of customers who are not members to become members, we want to get up to about 50% – so one in two transactions within the next five years – then provide more services to those members and encourage them to shop across more of our business areas.”
As well as travel and food, the Midcounties businesses include funeral services, pharmacies and childcare.
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