Tour Operators HOW TO
HOW TO...
... work with tour operators
James Burrows is the director of aviation for Thomas Cook Airlines, which is one of four owned by Thomas Cook Group Airlines, flying 17.2 million passengers a year with revenues of £2.7 billion. He has these key tips for airports hoping to work with tour operators.
Technicalities and infrastructure When it comes to early scoping discussions, a tour operator will bring forward airline technical queries first to test viability. For example, it needs to understand any operational restrictions of the route. Some airports Thomas Cook Airlines might wish to operate to may not be able to accept the aircraft due to runway length, restrictions on aircraft weight, or obstacles restricting take-off performance.
Relationships
For airports wishing to approach tour operators about developing new routes, they need to target either the commercial or aviation senior managers. Developing great relationships with these teams is crucial for understanding the answers to questions about the tour operator’s business context, ambitions, customer base and challenges.
Timing is crucial Do not wait around. For example, Thomas Cook Group Airlines typically plans programmes 18 months before a season commences and looks to launch them on sale a year before programmes start. An operator with its own airline, or affiliated or partner airlines, will be working to those lead-ins so airports need to be thinking at least in those timescales too.
Commercial opportunities If a route is deemed operationally acceptable, we would then undertake a full market analysis of the route, looking at competitors in the market, potential demand, expected route revenue, potential for connecting traffic and costs to operate the route. Unique to our position as a group of airlines, we might consider whether there may be other airports that we operate to, which can help with airline logistics, as well as in-destination support too. If infrastructure for airlines and tour operators already exists in a similar, or identical state close by, there may be opportunities
for economies of
Technical queries come first for tour operators
scale to be realised. We would always
seek to involve in these discussions the airports, tourist boards and where possible our airline partners – maybe not even the airline that we’re intending to use. For example, in our group we have phenomenal experience in the Condor team of connecting traffic, which adds further
support for new routes. An example is how our customers can now connect in Manchester from other UK and European cities into our network. With Thomas Cook
Group having its own airlines, in the past two to three years we have developed our seat-only market. We are becoming less reliant on tour operator support for some new routes. Examples of this include our expansion from Manchester to Barbados, Miami, New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Working with our colleagues from Condor, we realised there was demand for these new routes. Manchester Airport, overseas tourist boards and destination airports all provided the analytics and support needed for us to present the business case to our board. We will continue to work with all of our partners to develop various key leisure routes.
routesonline.com ROUTES NEWS 2016 ISSUE 3 67
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