Customers
Overview
To be the best travel operator in the world, we have to build the best relationships with our customers. We believe it's essential to put our customers first and to build trust with everyone we send on holiday each year.
Our aim is to be No.1 for customer delivery. Protecting the health and safety of our customers is a primary responsibility – we see it as an essential part of the quality and strength of our brand. The merger has enabled us to create a new Group Health and Safety department. The team previously dedicated to the UK market has been augmented to deal with safety issues across all source markets in the Group. This will include risk managing the Group's property, transport and excursion portfolio, to minimise risks to our customers and therefore to our operating businesses.
Our major initiatives and actions over the past year are outlined here under the following headings:
Understanding our customers
We actively seek customer feedback on all aspects of their holiday experience. Customer feedback questionnaires help us analyse the service each customer receives and make improvements where necessary.
In 2007 our customer service scores showed good year on year improvements and for the second year running the volume of complaints reduced. Key findings:
UK
- 95% of our UK customers say they would travel with us again
- 93% would recommend us to friends and family.
- Satisfaction scores for the service provided by our representatives was consistently high – 84% in summer 2006 and summer 2007 and up from 80% in winter 2005 to 85% in winter 2006
North America
- Our overall rating for customer satisfaction in 2006/07 was 91%
Northern Europe
- Our representatives are scored on their competence and attitude: across Thomas Cook Northern Europe (TCNE) as a whole, the average score remained consistently high in both summer 2006 and summer 2007
- In summer 2007, 84% of respondents said they would travel with us again, 96% would recommend us and 60% were making a repeat trip with us within two years
For the past couple of years TCNE has been working on a major customer relations management programme based on building a databank with a complete history of all clients. Drawing on this data, we can then treat, serve and communicate with our clients in a more personal way, based on their preferences and earlier history. The whole programme covers the way we relate to customers pre-sale, during the sale, at the resort and after they return – and makes extensive use of online communication. Other projects within the programme include text messaging overseas and customer loyalty rewards.
Financial protection
We comply with the relevant financial protection arrangements in the jurisdictions where we operate. Our UK customers are protected under several statutory and voluntary schemes.
Flight based holiday arrangements are covered by the Civil Aviation Authority's ATOL (Air Travel Organisers' Licensing) scheme, which includes bonding arrangement and a back-up fund to protect customer prepayments.
To meet our obligations under the EC Package Travel Directive and UK Package Travel Regulations for non flight based holidays, we have bonding arrangements with the Association of British Travel Agents and the Federation of Tour Operators Trust Fund. These protect prepayments before people travel, and help bring customers home if they are stranded abroad by the failure of a bonded tour operator.
Accessibility
We're committed to providing equality of access to our flight operations, consistent with what is both reasonable and safe. We approach this obligation positively and are active members of Tourism for All UK, which supports accessibility and social inclusion in tourism.
We engage regularly with the Air Transport Users' Council, the official consumer watchdog, on a wide range of aviation consumer and regulatory issues, directly and through our trade associations.
Through our trade associations we're also represented on the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee. We comply fully with current legislation and adopt suggested best practice guidelines for airlines wherever logistically possible. We continue to work toward compliance with stage two of the EU1107 regulations on Access to Air Travel for Disabled or Persons of Reduced Mobility, and will be fully compliant ahead of the July 2008 implementation date.
In 2005 we became the first major high street travel agent to sell holidays for people with impaired mobility. We work in partnership with a unique operator, Enable Holidays, which specialises in customers with impaired mobility and their friends and family. Endorsed by national disability charity Scope, Enable has hotels in 20 popular overseas holiday destinations which offer exceptional facilities for people with disabilities and combines hotel stays with airport assistance and adapted taxi transfers.
Group safety standards
We want to extend good practice safety standards across all Group companies and source markets. Acting as a Group should help to accelerate safety improvements, particularly given our combined influence on suppliers.
During 2008 we will develop good practice guidance for the Group, drawing on best practice within the organisation and recognising that our many source markets are subject to a wide variety of local legal requirements.
Accommodation safety
Safety in the thousands of hotels and villas we use globally has always been a priority – with particular focus on fire safety, pools, balconies, lifts, glass and general safety around the properties.
As well as meeting local and national safety standards as a minimum, we want suppliers to move towards standards such as those in the 1986 EU Fire Safety recommendations and Federation of Tour Operators (FTO) Codes of Practice. We are also developing procedures for monitoring and managing suppliers involved in independent and online-packaged holidays. In 2008 we will be trialling web enabled self assessment protocols to support this.
Transport safety
Most of our customers are transported from their arrival airport to their accommodation by third party coach and minibus operators.
As we increasingly standardise on the same transport providers in each resort for all Group companies, we will make use of the work already done in the UK to promote the Coachsafe code of practice irrespective of local regulations. This sets out safety standards in areas such as fitting of seat belts.
Excursion safety
As customers demand increasingly adventurous activities and excursions, we need to ensure these are run safely with appropriate licenses and insurance.
We have developed audit protocols for a wide variety of excursions which can be used across the Group, particularly as we increasingly standardise on the same suppliers for all Group customers in each destination.
Health and hygiene
Our Group Health and Hygiene Manager monitors supplier performance and has implemented a programme of work to increase hygiene awareness.
We work with the FTO and its medical adviser as well as bodies such the Health Protection Agency, UK National Travel Health Network and Centre, World Health Organisation and European Working Group on Legionella Infection to monitor public health issues, advise customers or take appropriate action. Here, too, we will be developing Groupwide policies in 2008.
Child safety and protection
The safety of children on our holidays is a primary concern. We are working towards meeting UK Ofsted good practice guidance in our children's club facilities, even though these operate in overseas jurisdictions.
Employees who deal with children must have appropriate childcare qualifications and references, and are subject to Criminal Records Bureau checks in the UK.
We have a highly developed child protection policy which staff must follow in the event of any incident occurring involving children overseas.
Aviation safety
In 2007 MyTravel Airways and MyTravel Aircraft Engineering (MTAE) became the world's first charter airline to gain an internationally recognised safety excellence registration: IATA's Operational Safety Audit.
This covers over 750 standards and recommended practices in aviation safety and operations.
Our own airlines are highly regulated and represent a low safety risk. We have been working with them to develop a protocol for assessing any third party airline that we charter. This will be managed centrally by Group Health and Safety using our own airline staff. It will be further developed to cover aviation risks in resorts, supplementing existing FTO codes on use of balloons, helicopters and light aircraft.
Thomas Cook Group hotels
Our Sunwing hotels are monitored by an independent consultancy, checksafetyfirst. For the second year in a row, it has listed our Sunwing Resort Arguineguin as the best hotel on Gran Canaria and in Spain for pool and food safety.
Our HiHotels in Spain use a third party consultancy, Saniconsult, to monitor food hygiene.In 2007 Saniconsult ranked our Hotel Panoramic in Majorca in the top six of the 350 hotels it inspects.
Due diligence systems
If customers raise safety issues with us, we follow them up and aim to prevent any recurrence. As well as being good practice, this helps protect us from litigation risk.
Legal obligations vary between source markets, but we will examine the scope for developing common policies and sharing information across the Group on issues that can affect other source market customers.
Customer communication
Customers can support our safety efforts by not putting themselves needlessly at risk.
So we have a comprehensive communication strategy to remind our UK customers to be ‘safe aware' overseas: we provide information in brochures, with their tickets, inflight and in the resort. We will look to harmonise customer information across the Group this year.
Supplier communication
Suppliers to our UK-based operations are all given the FTO codes of practice.
We attend and promote FTO health and safety seminars in resorts and also deliver our own seminars in some destinations. The enlarged Group gives us greater scope for doing this, reinforcing our leading position on safety.
Database systems
The Thomas Cook and MyTravel legacy organisations both used a risk management database system known as PASS.
During 2008 these systems will be merged to bring our property portfolio and safety information together on a single central system. We then aim to roll this web-enabled system out to overseas resorts and other source markets to begin building a group database on the properties we use and to monitor their safety status.
Staff training
We're committed to providing continuing professional development for our health and safety team, and people carrying out work for the Health and Safety department.
We also use consultants where specialist knowledge is required, notably for incident investigation or issues such as legionella or gas safety.
Driving industrywide change
We support and often lead industry initiatives on safety issues. In particular, we've been driving for higher international standards of safety in tourist accommodation.
As well as lobbying for long-overdue adoption of the 1986 European Community Recommendations on Fire Safety in Existing Hotels, we've been working with the Federation of Tour Operators to help it develop codes of practice. These now provide the basis for our own hotel inspections.
Targets for 2008
- Continue reducing customer complaints through effective complaint management
- Increase the number of complaints resolved in resort
- Improve pre-departure information
- Share best practice across the Group
- Develop and apply health and safety policies and procedures for the whole Group, benefiting from the centre of expertise in the UK and the work already carried out by both legacy groups
- Review existing policies and procedures for consistency across all source markets
- Converge the Group's various legacy reporting systems to enable production of consistent health and safety reports and bring together our property portfolio and safety information on a single central system
- Roll this web-enabled system out to overseas resorts and other source markets during 2008, to begin building a group database on the properties we use and monitor their safety status going forward
- Harmonise customer communication across the Group wherever possible.
- Ensure we maintain continuing professional development of staff employed in health and safety, and train and educate appropriate members of staff in their health and safety responsibilities
- Enhance our aviation safety processes, with particular regard to aviation suppliers in resorts which are potentially subject to less stringent checks – notably suppliers of balloon, helicopter and light aircraft excursions
- Maintain IOSA registration for the combined UK airlines.