Case Study - Thomas Cook Inspires

Background:
Thomas Cook TV has the most extensive video library available to any tour operator/travel agent in the World. Some 17,000 hours of high quality video, indexed and metatagged are available to deliver persuasive, relevant and compelling video content to potential customers through a variety of emerging distribution channels. This video content library can be broadcast across any platform as it is available to Thomas Cook completely rights cleared.

Objectives:
Thomas Cook Inspires business objectives:

• To attract and capture customers through the brochure-of-the-future
• To drive sales to all three Thomas Cook booking channels – high street, call centres and via the web
• To promote and enhance the Thomas Cook brand
• To develop video content for multiple use

Mechanic:
To exploit this content Thomas Cook TV launched the first broadband site in the travel industry to offer free hotel downloads to mobile devices. Thomas Cook Inspires showcased video content available to customers who wanted to browse holiday resorts and hotels in a non-linear way.

The site was organised into six different categories: Destination, Faraway, Luxury, Sun, Honeymoon and Families. Over a thousand video elements from Thomas Cook TV featuring 42 different destinations, 68 resorts and 642 hotels were available to view and download for free.

There were several options available to the customer including the choice of booking their holiday via the Thomas Cook.com website. One of the most exciting innovations was the ability to download the hotel they were interested in to their home computer, MP3 player, hand-held games console or mobile phone.

Results:
Thomas Cook was surprised by the number of downloads and that customers were embracing new technologies so readily. The data gave the holiday sales team a heads up on what customers were looking for in a holiday whether it was the type or destination or the increasingly popular time to travel.

Thomas Cook saw a healthy return on invest and is looking forward to the future phases to enhance this service and integrate this into the other areas of our business such as Retail, Airline and In-Resort.