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Thomas Cook has spent a long time trying to figure out what to do when it comes to providing online services to customers. After years of working with bedbanks (some of them it actually owned), Thomas Cook Group went all in with Expedia during the summer when it outlined a fundamental shift in how it will source and sell hotel stock. Expedia now powers the platform of all hotel-only bookings on the tour operator's website, as well as becoming the preferred supplier of properties for Thomas Cook's deals for city breaks. Such a deal illustrates how far Expedia and its accommodation rival Booking.com have come in terms of their influence on the traditional players and other OTAs. The Expedia/Webjet packages in the "new operating model" are being forecast to bring about net benefits to the tune of ￡160 million-￡180 million by 2020. Meanwhile, Thomas Cook's online bookings are nearly accounting half of all sales, having jumped from 40% in 2015 to 46% this year. Web bookings are on a tear in the UK, jumping by 27% during 2017 (Germany is 22%). Read original article |
