Thomas Cook is the oldest tour operators in the world, launched in 1841 in the UK, it slowly grew all around the world and became one of the biggest travel agencies in the industry. According to CNN Travel, the company was created by cabinet-maker Thomas Cook and was originally focused on one-day rail excursions. Four years later, the agency organized it first for-profit trip and in 1855 they conducted their first continental tour with an all-inclusive package. Then starts a century of evolution and the company goes from one owner to the other while growing and getting bigger and better.
But how can we perceive the personality and the emotion of this brand? Thomas Cook’s founder passed a long time ago and since the agency left the familial ownership, it hasn’t stopped going from one owner to the other and ended up absorbed by a big group.
The fact that it is so ancient gave them the chance to get an expert status as they have been doing this for a long time and are actually at the origin of the industry. That’s why in the 20thcentury, they only grew bigger: in 1965 their net profits exceed £1 million for the first time and in 1997 they launched their online stores which made them the first UK travel agency to sell trips online (still according to CNN travel).
But because they were so important, everyone wanted a piece of the cake and by moving their grounds so many times, I think they lost their identity and who they wanted to be. Without an identity you obviously cannot build a personality and even less arouse emotions among your customers. The new generations couldn’t relate to Thomas Cook in any ways: their marketing strategies were poor if it isn’t inexistent, they didn’t try to humanize the brand at all (no celebrity endorsement nor spoke characters) and the head of the brand wasn’t really defined as they changed it so many times and was shared with so many others (opposite to what Appledid with Steve Jobs or Facebookwith Mark Zuckerberg). They were smart to launch the online retail soon, but they didn’t understand the digital tools that were rising at the same time and were going to eventually sign their death sentence.
In Australia, Thomas Cook don’t even have actual stores were customers can chat and book directly with agents. They used to only have a website that is no longer on service since mid 2019. The only option is to book from the British version of the website that books travels to Australia, but nothing local. So, I won’t even be talking about the customer experience as there are none in Australia. But even if you look up the shops in other countries, the experience isn’t amazing: the shops look boring and they actually even look a little bit cheap in my opinion.
Their original website looks old, I would even use the word tacky. Even their logos evolution isn’t revolutionary:
Thomas Cook failed to implement in Australia but was it the travel industry that couldn’t accept it there? The country's “travel functioning” is so different than in most of Europe countries. And why is that you could ask? Because it is a continent to itself. And people travel there in so many different ways but because it is so safe, it opens even more different possibilities on how to do it. Backpacking is a way of life and not everybody can handle it.
A lot of people say that if you go to Australia, you HAVE to backpack. But not everybody like sleeping in hostels, sitting in buses for weeks, carrying 80 liters on their back and so on. That’s where Thomas Cook tried to infiltrate the country and everything evoked previously explains why they failed. According to Wyse Travel, backpackers constitutes 13% of the travel industry in Australia! It is a totally different segment in Down Under and local agencies focused on that.
I chose to talk about Peter Pans Travel to contrast with our British big guy on the Australian soil. In my opinion they are one of the best examples I can think of in terms of brand personality. A brand, like a person, starts its identity by the name and they chose one that is already a good mind marker: they chose an emblematic character that we all know, Peter Pan. From there they created a concept and that helped them develop a personality. Already when you enter their shops, it is an experience. The floor is green like if you were on the grass and they are swings around, it’s colorful, there are screens showing amazing trips, and the music is rousing. The agents are young and welcoming, they are casual and easy-going. You know that this is a place that looks like the travel you want to do. They do have an online retail system that works pretty well but they really base their strategy on the face-to-face exchange. PPTknows that travelers of today are not interested in all-inclusive super organized trips, they want to leave some space for the unexpected, they want to go off the beaten track, they are looking for thrills and unique experience. So obviously going with a travel agency would obstruct that! But not with Peter Pans Travels! Most people don’t enter the shop to book a trip but to ask questions because they just arrived on the big island and don’t know where to start. The travel agents are trained for that and they know that taking things slowly will most likely lead them to a closed deal. Because they are friendly, they are reassuring and even though a customer will leave after a first encounter, they will not forget and in most of cases, will come back.
That is why, both by their personality and their strategy, this brand is killing it in the backpacking industry. They created an environment that makes their customer remember them and humanized a lot by promoting a human exchange instead of an online one.
Source :
1st picture : https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/605382374892775622/
2nd picture : https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/488499890821780177/
3rd picture : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cook_(entreprise)
Karla Cripps, 2019, CNN Travel : https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/thomas-cook-history-timeline/index.html
Comments