Crafting Experiences: Thomas Cook's Evolution In Travel

Thomas Cook India, one of the leading omnichannel travel companies in the country offers a broad spectrum of services including Foreign Exchange, Corporate Travel, MICE, Leisure Travel, Value Added Services and Visa Services.

In an exclusive chat with Everything Experiential for our BrandCraft series, Abraham Alapatt, President & Group Head, Marketing, Service Quality, Value Added Services & Innovation, Thomas Cook India outlines the revolution of the brand, how the concept of holidays and travel has been transforming, and more.

Edited excerpts:

How has the evolution of the brand Thomas Cook been since its inception? 

Thomas Cook is 143 years old and has had a glorious history. The brand, when it was with the erstwhile parent company, the British company, with Mr. Cook himself, the founder, effectively created the concept of modern travel as we know it. The first group travel, was a short train ride that he organised between Peterborough and Leicester. And interesting side story, it was to keep a group of people from going to the pub and drinking because they had an alcohol problem.

So from that first momentous journey 143 years ago, and then seeing that there was a business opportunity and creating what he did in the form of Thomas Cook and so on with his son, the company has pretty much then innovated and created everything that we take for granted in modern travel today.

So from the first hotel coupon to the first traveller’s check, which is then called the circular mode, he and that company have pretty much created the basic building blocks of modern travel as we know it. Because in those days, intercountry travel was rare, as you was cumbersome, it was expensive, it was made by ship.

And those voyages were long and arduous. So I think that was the origin. And after that, of course, they grew and went into a lot of the countries which were then the British Empire, including India, which was the first office that they set up way back when the East India Company was still in India, in Mumbai.

So we're part of a very proud legacy of this company that pretty much created the industry as we know it. A lot of switches, we've been part of the Fairfax Group since 2012 and happily charted our own history since then.

For the first time we had a promoter who believed in the power of the brand, who believed in long term, who was willing to invest for the long term, especially from the technology standpoint. So in many ways, Thomas Cook India, which became free of the British parent in 2012, has started its own journey with various acquisitions - bought various companies since 2012, including Sterling Holidays in India, SOTC and TCI-Sita, and of course the destination management companies as well. So effectively today, interestingly, almost like a Hindi movie script, we have gone from the Indian arm of a British company to a multinational in our own right, 25 countries, five continents, and bought the brand from Thomas Cook UK as well when they were being liquidated.

We've been very blessed to be the leader in outbound between Thompson and SRTC, the leader inbound between TCI and Sita, the leader in mice, the leader in business travel, and I think a very fast growing domestic business, which is a business we got into late but have made a fair amount of growth also from a positioning point of view, we've been fortunate because we obviously had a very large network coming from our history, physical branches.

What we've done very well since 2015 effectively is also built a very strong e-commerce capability. So we've taken a stance that India is a unique market. It's going to grow very differently from the Western counterparts, which made the jump from brick to click very abruptly with the kind of changes that ensued. We believe India is quite unique for a variety of reasons - large population, big difference in incomes and so on.

What is the division of the market like - between brick and click? And how has the concept of holidays and travel been transforming?

We believe that the market's actually pure brick, which is the first-timers people coming into the market, especially for international travel. You've got a small but rapidly growing digital economy, which is pure click. And our belief that a large amount of the customers actually are hybrid customers, a fair amount of digital discovery and evaluation and fulfilment, very often being largely offline, give the customer a seamless experience between pure brick at one end, pure click at the other, and seamlessly moving from one to the other, depending on the customer's convenience at any stage. We believe the same customer can go from pure brick to pure click in a few years, as we have seen, especially with the pandemic and the number of people who moved into digital transactions, and we believe that you will see the pure click growing rapidly with the youngest economy, digital transactions growing at the pace they are, et cetera.

And you'll also see a very fast growing first time getting into the market, pure brick needs lot of physical reassurance, customers as well etc, given India's size and economic growth. So our belief is that both India and Bharat, as they're popularly called, both are significant growth drivers and both are markets in themselves. And we are uniquely positioned, especially coming out of the pandemic, which I think we navigated recently.

Well, we've come out stronger with a more efficient workforce model, lot more technology capabilities, and I think that's working very well. And I think travel is bounded back, as you'll appreciate, much stronger than pre-pandemic. People realise that when travel was taken away during the pandemic, how important it was and what a sort of creator of memories it was from people relationship point of view.

I think all of us discovered that. So I think travel has grown and I think also people have come to appreciate that holidays especially should be frictionless, should be problem free, etc. The value that we bring to the table as seamless integrators of services, I think has also played out well today.

I think the other big change that has happened in the market is young, more affluent. India is willing to pay more for quality, doesn't want to take a risk or penny pinch for a hard-earned holiday break, wants a little bit more creature comfort and luxury on holidays than they did before, who are willing to compromise to save money on a holiday.

Today, you see Indians for example, you see a big growth, for example, in the trends to take short term borrowings for a better holiday. These are things the previous generation would never even think of. So because this is a generation that's buying mobile phones, for example, on EMIs, they don't see a fundamental disconnect in, for example, taking EMIs to take a holiday.

So I think for a variety of reasons, the brands evolved with time, leveraged its traditional strengths, taken some long term calls, and I think very clearly kept focus on the premium mass customer and the focus on quality and reassurance. And I think even through the pandemic, I think the one thing we did was stay in touch with customers, reassure them, refund where necessary. So I think all that played out well.

Word of mouth has also helped the brand in terms of saying, listen, this was the one brand and business that stayed true to customers and service even in the most difficult times.

What has been your primary focus when it comes to offering experiences to your customers particularly in the areas of corporate travel, MICE and leisure travel?

First, I think we need to recognise the phenomenon itself. I think this whole shift from travel for places and things to people travel for people and experience, I think is fundamental.

And I think there are a couple of larger reasons why this is happening. For the older generation, traveling abroad was in itself a novelty. Going abroad itself was physically a new experience. It was novel and prestigious in its own right.

And therefore, capturing those memories in the way that they did - traditional photographs, physical photographs, etc, was largely about capturing the physical aspect of it, which is about monuments and things that you physically saw. What has happened now with that international travel not being as rare as it was a generation before, and also the kind of influence of social media and OTT etc, travel has also become the gateway to experience. It's the gateway to reflect how cool you are, how with it you are, how sic you are as youngsters today.

So therefore, the need to create or indulge in experiences, that they're more aware of. I think what has also changed is that the awareness of cultural nuances, unique experiences, has also grown rapidly. The generation before us didn't know much.

They were pretty much like, I'm just happy to be here and being able to take photographs. But this generation is so much more aware of the places they're going to, the people they're seeing, the cultural nuances, thanks to the power of the Internet, the practices, the unique cultural traits, the unique food, unique drink, unique art forms, etc. So they are a lot more, first of all, aware, more curious, more inquisitive, and more wanting to experience and share.

And I think that whole needing to experience and share is driving what we call experiential travel. And I think that is visible across board, when it comes to travel.

You're seeing that in holidays, for sure, where you're seeing a fair amount of shift to customised holidays from fixed itineraries, a lot more customers come with a sense of what they want to do, not just where they want to go, but set of experiences that they themselves are coming to the table with to discuss and say, can you make this happen for me? So that's at the holiday level, obviously.

Mice, of course, is customisation to a different level. So here you have employers who very often are pushing the agenda now on performance because they're coming back after two, two and a half years of maybe recovery after the pandemic.

So it's a very competitive sort of marketplace and competitors within industries themselves are competing to outdo the other. Because very often the dealer or franchise network is common. Very often the wholesale retail networks are the same. So you got multiple sort of corporates wanting to provide unique experiences to create a sort of competitive advantage for themselves when it comes to the network, because obviously the network is crucial for that sector.

So I think to that extent, the sort of expectations from us as Mice service providers has also grown and therefore the need to say, I don't just want to go there and go within a certain cost. I also want truly unique experiences that these dealers are going to rave about, are going to share, are going to flaunt, and are going to sort of become something that we can leverage in terms of pushing for higher delivery.

So whether it's events where the awards are given, which typically is the gala night (they call these events}. So how can I create a unique sort of performance or venue, all of it for that day and during the break itself, give them a set of experiences that is truly unique, very often trying to tie up with a team or something for the annual conference and so on? So, at the mind's level, that's happening.

Interestingly, business travel as well, which is very often largely rudimentary in terms of get me from point A to point B, I need to do a meeting here, a couple of meetings - so now it's about mixing up a bit of pleasure with business. So it's what we call bleisure.

So sometimes a break is taken, sometimes even the business meeting itself is a quasi-relaxed, get to know each other kind of thing, especially if there are partners evaluating something before they sign a deal. So it's a bit of a get to know each other date kind of thing. Those experiences also are often being created.

So I think at every level we are seeing the shift to experiential travel and the need therefore, to have a sort of global, trusted partner like us who comes with the kind of experience that we do both in the B2C and B2B space. Having done this for years and with some of the largest corporate groups in the country, is invaluable. Because firstly, you don't want to take a risk because the stakes are high, and secondly, because you want to have ideas, but you don't want just mad ideas.

You want ideas that can be implemented and implemented to the fair degree of reassurance. So that continuum, I think, makes it sort of conducive for us to operate.

Which part of the Thomas Cook business is most lucrative and brings in maximum revenue?

We are equally travel and foreign exchange business. Both businesses are very large, roughly.

The foreign exchange business may be, depending on exchange rates, slightly more top-line driven on the right side, if you look at the sales. But from a revenue point of view, both businesses are equally important. So we're a well-balanced business in that sense.

But all these are interconnected if you look at the fact that we operate in every aspect of travel largely overseas. And foreign exchange is an integral part of whether you're going for business, you're going for Mice or you're going for a holiday, actually, it's highly symbiotic. So if the travel business grows, foreign exchange grows.

If the foreign exchange grows, it's actually reflecting a growing demand. It's all interconnected.

So we are in complementary businesses. And a lot of our overseas businesses are actually destination management companies. So, if we send more customers overseas, they get more business as well.

With the buzz of the Lakshadweep-Maldives issue, how has it affected the bookings and customer influx-outflux with regard to the same?

I think to be fair, I think we need to separate the politics of it from the business of it. We are not here to make a political statement. We are not here to take sides.

Of course, we are very strongly Indian and patriotic. But that's not the point. The point, really, is that there was no official listing from the government that we should discourage people from going to Maldives. That was something that some people did in their own zeal. We have never actively discouraged people from going to the Maldives.

We are a business, service providers – so if a customer wants to go to B or to b, our job is to ensure that unless there is a risk to them physically or their family or something, we shouldn't discourage travel to that destination. That said, obviously, we've seen actually on the counter side while people still travel to the Maldives, despite all we'd like to see on social media.

In fact, there were a few reports recently about how that really hasn't slowed down much. Actually, if you leave aside the optics of everybody saying what they said, that people who booked and were said to travel obviously are not going to lose money by not going. It is still a spectacular destination, even if you leave the politicians and the politics.

But what we've done definitely seen is a renewed growing interest in luxury and other destinations of the like, including Andaman’s and stuff like that, which is similar from an offering point. So I think for us, we are agnostic, we are service providers, we're here to provide the best possible holiday that we can give customers for the time and money that they have at hand.

The opening of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir – how has Thomas Cook been involved in it, in terms of offering specialised customer experiences?

I think domestic tourism itself over the years has grown significantly by leaps and bounds, especially coming out of the pandemic, also because it coincided with improved infrastructure, dramatically improved connectivity, especially air connectivity, with a lot of new airports coming up, a lot of connections.

Otherwise, travelling in India was a little tougher because unless you had a lot of time, you had to fly somewhere and then take a train and then maybe a car after that. What changed dramatically with the kind of project, the number of airports that came up was that you had to a lot of tourist destinations, direct flights that cut down the need for the amount of time you needed to travel, the logistics and pain in moral. So that was one big ecosystem change.

Two is, of course, even at the train level and the road level, significant improvements, improved trains, on time, quality train experiences like Vande Bharat, so on. And of course, our roads and cars have also improved significantly with fast tags and all that, offering seamless transit. So I think all that has been driving domestic tourism for a while and a fair amount of discovery as well on the back of that.

And what we also saw growing fairly early on, in fact, SOTC, one of our group companies, was the first to launch something called darshans, which we launched pre-pandemic, which was basically trying to ensure that you actually got a pre-booked darshan at some of the biggest temples across the country. We have seen the rise of spiritual tourism on the back of domestic tourism for a while now, and that's only getting stronger.

Besides the traditional Chaar Dhaam kind of thing, which has always been a very popular product and thing for us. We have a product custom made for it where we offer sort of three important listings. So the point is well planned, good quality experiences and so on. And we believe that portfolio is growing and will grow.

We've already seen a lot of plans around improved connectivity and infrastructure in temple towns. That was always a constraint because a lot of these temple towns did not have good quality hotels, especially. Now that connectivity is improved, that's behind us.

With the improved hotels, especially in the three star and above range, which is where we play, I think that's a big gap, is also going to get filled. So the demand has always been there, connectivity is in place. Hotels also improve. I think we've got a very strong industry segment growing there.

Customisation and personalisation are big when it comes to targeting customers.  How has Thomas Cook been offering the same for attracting maximum customers?

I think the single biggest thing we have done is that we have essentially helped customers customise by doing a couple of things. One, is we've created a skeletal product construct for almost every destination that a customer want to travel to, which are essentially the key gateway and core sightseeing or experiences that every customer will want to do anyway. It's a typical have to do kind of tick list, so that core already exists.

So, when we start talking to a customer about customisation, we don't start from scratch. The foundation is already built. We then build around that core.

What kind of interest do you have? How much time do you have? Are you into sport? Are you into adventure? Are you into art? Based on those cues, you have buckets to choose from of experiences to add to that core that you already have.

What we've also done is tied the back end for seamless real time inventory and pricing. So our back-end is connected to airline GDS systems at one end, hotel inventory at the other, etc. So what you're doing is finding out what the customer wants to do, trying to create an itinerary with the customer. So the customer and I are looking at the same screen almost when we talk and building the itinerary and checking availability and confirming price, almost real time.

And today, think about the fact that we are now increasingly seeing customers choosing to transact with us with something like media calling, which allows the almost real time benefit of sitting across the table without the inconvenience of having to spend the time and effort of going to a branch and parking all the chairs. So I think that piece of making the conversation easier, more transparent and more real time makes it much easier for us to agree on let's say a first cut itinerary, us to have priced it almost simultaneously, confirmed it, and sent you the details so that you can make a payment again digitally without moving from your house. I think the whole idea of planning, consultation, finalisation and fulfilment almost seamlessly in a conversation, I think, is really the kind of expectation customers of today's generation who are what we call the Amazon generation actually have come to expect.

So we've adapted to that quite well, because the problem with pure click providers is that they expect the customer to be able to know what they're looking for, put things together, etc. And in a pure brick environment, they expect you to go to the branch, wait, then talk to somebody, depend on things, then they come back with the itinerary, then they come back with price, availability, then they come back with a price. So it's a multistage conversation, which is difficult. So what we try to do is try to take the best of both and giving you the physical interaction, feel, consultation, discussion, questions, answers, etc, and being able to give you almost an online experience from a speed and convenience point of view, because we are talking about the hybrid and the brick and click the kind of formats.

How much does Thomas Cook draw in terms of brick customers, click customers and hybrid customers? 

Actually reflective of the Indian population, pure click customers for typically what we sell, which is slightly more expensive overseas holidays are actually a very small percentage, and they end up being the simple shorter itineraries, typically to shorter haul destinations like Thailand, etc, where they're basically buying very basic budget holidays, ticket plus basic sightseeing, that kind of stuff.

Most of our business is, however, the longer haul, longer duration Europe kind of holidays, where typically the ticket sizes are higher. And in those kind of transactions, very often the customer has multiple questions, multiple clarifications, especially around visas and stuff like that, documentation, this, that, and also because of the kind of costs involved, they want to be sure of what they're getting. It's not enough to just say half day basic site seeing all that they want to know, etc

So we find that what you really see is about 25 to 30 per cent doing what we call assisted e-commerce, which is they'll do a fair amount of digital discovery evaluation, etc, but may still call or visit a branch to close, which is to clarify questions, to get some reassurance, etc. So it may be to an agent at a call centre, it may be through a video call, it maybe through a physical visit.

But these customers, they may even say, “Okay, I'll go back, and now I'm convinced you've answered all my questions. I'll go back, talk to my family and make the booking online.” So, you may actually have digital discovery, physical conversation, back to digital fulfilment, or a combination of it.

When it comes to your marketing strategies, what percentage of Thomas Cook's marketing is through traditional mediums like television or print or radio or even, OOḤ? And, what percentage is digital marketing and experiential marketing? 

We are skewed towards digital. Last few years, I've actually been saying that this concept of traditional and digital is itself a misnomer today because digital has become traditional.

The dominant media today, consumed by most urban, middle class and upward Indians today is digital first. In fact, in a random room of 30 pluses, if you ask them how many are even getting the newspaper at home, you will actually be surprised by how few they are.

So to not in any way downgrade the importance of traditional media, what has changed, both in the print realm, where digital has replaced a lot of print, especially for news consumption, also OTT and YouTube, which has already become the biggest viewed channel in the country, is that the concept of traditional itself is undergone a change. So, today we are skewed to digital for those reasons, because digital discovery has become almost default.

The first discovery or referral that we get is very often digital. Not to say that print, especially for older, more traditional customers, doesn't work. It's very important.

We are one of the biggest spenders on traditional as well but in terms of proportion, we are about 65 to 70 per cent, sometimes digital. And that's a combination of going after people with intent, because in digital, the advantages I can reach you when I know you're looking for it, because you have displayed intent on a search engine and so on. I can also do locally cohort, geo-targeting, pin code targeting, so on.

Lot more focus, therefore, and very often it's also to amplify my message. Social is also a big part. We get a lot of queries and visibility through social as well. So that's the piece on proportion.

In terms of experiential, I must say that digital has become so powerful that today a lot of experiential marketing itself is on a digital platform. So what we did recently, we did an interesting anamorphic and mixed reality campaign. They are actually digital campaigns; they just use the backdrop of a physical outdoor to add the impact. That's actually the way media has become -  traditional and digital have almost become blurred.

In terms of product innovation, value added services and your larger business plans, what can we expect from Thomas Cook?

Just like we believe there is a digital-led India and there is a physical led India, and both will grow for some time, given India's unique market, we also believe that customised holidays and group holidays will both also grow. That is because for a lot of first timers and a lot of people, there are certain advantages that group travel brings, including competitive rates, no headaches, everything taken care of, Indian meals, they are pure vegetarian, visa processing, all that. No hassle about planning itinerary, tour manager at hand, in case there's a crisis and so on and so forth.

At the other hand, we are also obviously seeing and will continue to see a lot of customised holidays happen. As customers get more confident customers, time becomes more crucial. So planning at their own convenience becomes important.

They are led by the kind of experiences they uniquely want to consume, based on their interests. So obviously, customised holidays will also grow based on those unique needs. So both segments will grow. For example, whoever thought that there would be group travel to the poles, to Antarctica? There already is. So I think the point is that both group and individual travel will grow.

There's a big skew towards experience led travel, as I said. So, we are committed to ensuring that every one of our holidays has highlight experiences built in. So we are the pioneer of travel. We understand world travel better than anybody else. So we are uniquely placed to say, whichever country or place you're visiting, we can, based on your interest, organize something truly unique and local for you. And I think really, that's the essence of travel.

How do you travel like a local? How do you experience what the locals do? How do you feel like local? Not like a foreigner. That's, I think, a driver.

And we will always be driven by the need to ensure a quality product offering and service offering. We are clear we will not compromise on quality. Even if you're pushed on price, we'd rather say no to it, than deliver a sub-standard experience, because we are very clear, we are working with the most celebrated name in travel.

It is the era of technology and AR VR AI. So how do you integrate these formats, AR VR AI, technological innovations, as part of your customer experiences that you offer to your customers?

Frankly, I don't think AR and VR have lived up to the kind of hype that was being made earlier. And in fact, you are seeing less and less of VR in a lot of these things.

Maybe it'll come up in another avatar, but the earlier avatar of VR has not grown at the rate that we thought. In fact, at one time, journalists used to ask me, do you think VR is going to replace travel? I said, I don't think virtual reality is ever going to replace the real thing.

Meaning you travel because of the place, the people, the culture, the experiences that make it unique. No headset is going to give you that experience. So we firmly believe nothing beats real travel.

About AI, I think a lot of people said it's a threat and we actually see it as a great option. So we believe that AI actually can help grow the industry itself because what it's doing is creating more organised information faster, more actionable information faster, which can help at the planning stage of travel. And we ourselves are starting to use AI in some of our tools to help plan itineraries for our chat bots and so on.

We are also seeing some early customers come with some form of AI driven plans for travel. And we don't see it as a bad thing at all, because if somebody has a fair idea of what they want to do and we just need to tweak it and execute it and price it, no harm at all, right? It's actually cutting short the whole effort of putting it together. But I think where we have to be focused on is the genuine value addition.

What we're seeing is that AI has still not got the thing of the efficiency of travel. Because if we were to do some of the AI itineraries that we've tested ourselves, it is very time and cost inefficient, so those kind of sort of nuts and bolts, I think, is where you need human value addition.

Because what AI can do is tell you to go to a place, it cannot organize an experience. Because that requires connections, that requires many things coming together for an experience, typically. So that, I think, is the other area of play that we think we can actually work with AI to make even an AI itinerary more valuable and on the ground for a customer. Sure.

What, according to you, are the trends that are going to disrupt the Indian travel and tourism industry in 2024? 

If you look at the larger trajectory, I think this is the golden age of, if you're looking from India, especially India outbound point of view, I think it is a fantastic time to be in this industry, in this country. You've got the fastest growing major economy in the world, the youngest demography in the world, the fastest growing digital economy in the world.

You got huge growth of pride, which is driving domestic growth. You've got incredibly improved, rapidly improving infrastructure across board. You're seeing rising affluence.

You're seeing growing inspiration for travel across social media, OTT, etc. And you're seeing rapidly growing confidence in a breed of young India which today does not feel that going abroad is luxury. Earlier people tried to pack in all they did in international because they weren't sure they were going again. Right now they are so confident that they will travel next year. All these trends are interconnected in some way or the other.

Your vision and way forward for Thomas Cook in terms of marketing the brand and helping it grow and attracting the maximum revenue?

 I think we've navigated the most difficult time for the travel industry in our lifetime. We've navigated it well. We've come out stronger the last few quarters. We've seen the best results we've put out even pre-pandemic, which I think is sort of evidence of the kind of strength of the brand, the trust customers have in us, the kind of investments we've made in technology and productivity, I think we have a legacy to live up to. The expectations are high. As I said, it's a golden age of travel that we are seeing for India, especially the next few years. So I think we've got all the ingredients for fantastic growth and we've got a brand that we are absolutely proud of. So I think for the brand and business, the idea is to lead the industry as we have. It's a challenging thing to be the leader because you're on a treadmill. You have to constantly run by. So I think we will continue that. You'll see some exciting stuff coming out of us, both at a business product and branding communications level. But we're very clear we will lead and widen the gap between us and the others.