ALL ABOUT YOU — LETTERS
Change for charges Comment: APD reform [and the airline industry’s pricing policies] There are other categories where surcharges have a major impact. The first is redemption tickets (tickets paid for with airline miles). The airline still charges these fees, so a business-class air miles ticket to the Far East still requires £500- £600 in real money. The second is corporate fares, where discounts are often given only off the base fare. Finally, I understand that staff tickets also incur charges. I am not sure whether the proposal to incorporate these charges back into ticket prices would cost airlines that much in systems changes. The revenue impact may be bigger. l BlackberryAddict
And what about all the child prices that are “free” or really low – are travel companies going to end up paying families to send children on holiday? l AndrewT
Play fair, Tui Story: Direct distribution central to strategy, says Tui The only reason for the increase in Tui’s online package bookings is its huge discounts. Customers
come into agencies to get recom- mendations, then go online to see £100s of discounts. The most I have seen is a £500 difference. Come on, Thomson, play fair! l Vicky Travel Weekly would welcome a response from Tui
A golden thanks Many thanks to Travel Weekly for hosting The Golden Opportunity. Pitching our ideas to ‘the dragons’ from Gold Medal, Dubai Tourism and Travel Weekly was quite scary so I was thrilled to win. The whole team is really excited
about promoting Dubai next year. l Helen Burgess (pictured), Adeona Travel, Cheadle Hulme
Hats off to Tipto I would like to say a big thank you to Tipto on behalf of myself and my 72 colleagues at Dawson & Sanderson for welcoming us to a a great event last month; we all thought the format, venue and event were brilliant. We learnt so much about the operators’ products and have come away keen to support you with bookings and promotions in our branches. l Judith Maloy, general manager, Dawson & Sanderson
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Green departure
LETTERS OF THE WEEK
Comment: Green cut costs but failed to grow Cook
Thomas Cook needed a hatchet (wo)man, someone who could press ahead with the creative destruction that it needed, so the ongoing directors could continue to manage the organisation relatively untainted from 2015. l jimbo
Michael Healy [Thomas Cook group chief financial officer] did a lot of the work in getting the banks to support the restructuring and also getting the bondholders sorted out. Much of the cost savings were pretty obvious and would have been listed – by the usual expensive consultants and set in motion by [former chief executive] Manny Fontenla-Novoa – and ready for Green to implement upon her arrival. She had run out of soundbites and needed to get out before it became clear she had no idea how to build margins on the core product. EasyJet’s Carolyn McCall is a better example of how to learn and then add value to a business. l Dermot
LETTERS PAGE Email:
editorial@travelweekly.co.uk Please write “For Letters Page” in the subject line. All correspondence must be accompanied by a name, job title and company address; these will be withheld on request. Please limit letters to 150 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for brevity and clarity. Other comments are taken from
Travelweekly.co.uk. The deadline is midday Monday.
How much do you expect the scrapping of APD for children to boost your family bookings?
A fair bit 10%
Not much 57%
Poll conducted December 5 •
gazetteers.com
Not at all 33%
GROUP
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