Moral support for Thomas Cook
Monday, 28 November 2011
After a rough week Thomas Cook has received a moral boost from Travel Councillors, whose managing director Steve Byrne has said Thomas Cook is a ‘great brand’ with ‘quality staff’.Mr Byrne used the recent furore over Thomas Cook to pay tribute to the company in his regular blog.
In a post titled ‘The future of Thomas Cook’, Byrne said: ‘I hope that Thomas Cook prevails.
‘It has had a great brand name and employs quality staff. Many of our travel counsellors, who have gone onto achieve great things, came out of Thomas Cook.
‘Whilst there may be no doubt that Thomas Cook may now face serious questions about its strategy and structure, its immediate problems have not been as a result of short term trading.’
However he added: ‘The fundamental business…remains profitable.’
Byrne mentioned an article by the Daily Telegraph last week, which questioned the value of travel agents in the light of Thomas Cook’s financial woes.
Byrne stated he agreed with the conclusion reporter Nick Trend came to, that ‘there will always be a place for companies that can adapt quickly and offer a more secure form of holiday’, saying what matters is added value and servicing the customer’s needs.
He stated: ‘There are many independent agents up and down the country and many individual sales professionals at Thomas Cook that have customers that choose to come back to them year after year.
‘To sound the death knell of the travel agent because of the problems facing Thomas Cook is like saying that all retail brands are doomed because Woolworth’s failed – not that Thomas Cook is Woolworth’s.’
Byrne added: ‘There will be many in business that will learn a lot from this week. One main lesson will be to spread your risk so you are not dependent on one particular supplier or customer – Thomas Cook accounts for less that 2% of our total sales and no one supplier accounts for more than 6% of our total sales – and the second one is that always prepare for the worst-case scenario.
‘Even a few months ago it would have been unthinkable that a company of the size of Thomas Cook could fail.
‘It hopefully won’t come to that but nevertheless, the fact that the spectre has been raised is a valuable reminder that in business you always have to cover the worst-case scenario.
‘A reconstituted Thomas Cook may be smaller, but with a deep sense of purpose about what it is and stands for; reducing its debt; empowering its various brands that remain and management to run their businesses; and leveraging that once ‘trusted brand’ to improve people’s lives through the various distribution channels and people they have; that may be a Thomas Cook with a future.’
