Product offering
Our products
Ensuring product quality is an important element of the value we add for customers. Our dedicated quality assurance team continuously monitors product performance and feeds information to managers in our tour operating, airline, retail and overseas delivery operations.
The key measures we use are:
- Airline on-time performance
- Information from our front-line resort teams and agents
- Customer feedback and complaints to our dedicated customer service teams
- Customer satisfaction questionnaires, processed by an independent third party.
Our major initiatives and actions over the past year are outlined here by source market:
- UK & Ireland
- Northern Europe
- Continental Europe
UK & Ireland
We monitor the quality of the properties that we use by collecting feedback from our customers through various channels including customer satisfaction questionnaires. We work with hoteliers to ensure that they are able to offer the highest standards to our guests: if they are unable to meet our standards we will remove them from the programme.
We have a robust system for ensuring that the information in our brochures is correct, so that what customers see in the brochure is what they get when they arrive. We ensure they are advised of any changes to their holiday in good time before they travel, and are investing in further system improvements to ensure an even more seamless flow of information.
Under our health and safety policy, we audit all charter and scheduled properties, using Federation of Tour Operators (FTO) documentation so standards and guidelines are in line with the industry as a whole. We work to best industry practice including EU recommendations.
Our own staff inspect all charter properties personally. A rolling programme of checks includes audits by qualified resort staff and in-house teams covering general safety and specific aspects such as kids’ clubs, swimming pools, fire hazards, hygiene, balconies and public walkways. If there are concerns, we arrange for inspections by fire, hygiene, Corgi or other specialist consultants. Our local reps carry out monthly checks of facilities such as fire alarms.
With properties further afield – mainly for scheduled holidays – we sometimes rely on self-assessment. The most popular properties and those identified as higher-risk receive a personal visit.
If we find problems, we work with the hotel to improve standards and correct defects. Where properties cannot or will not comply, we withdraw them from our programmes or specify which rooms can be used by our customers. Where there is no alternative, we will move people from a non-compliant hotel – even in mid-season.
We also check all the excursions we sell, including bus and air transportation, restaurants, kitchens, water quality, and coach or minibus transfers.
We investigate every accident or outbreak of illness such as Legionnaires, meningitis and chickenpox. After natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes we visit affected properties to ensure their facilities are back up to standard and have no structural after-effects.
Looking ahead, we will continue to work with the FTO and ABTA to promote health and safety in all our destination countries.
Northern Europe
To help us improve quality we closely monitor customer complaints across the whole Group. In Northern Europe, work continues to further improve our hotel product and to find ways of serving our clients and running our resorts more efficiently
Our customer satisfaction survey – established for 25 years – is the largest continuously operating survey of its kind in the Nordic countries. It is a very valuable tool for quality assurance and quality improvement, and is itself constantly refined and improved.
We email customers a questionnaire after their holiday, covering the hotel, our staff service and other aspects of the trip. We have email addresses for almost 80% of customers and receive responses from three out of five of these. These responses are compiled into extensive reports published weekly on our intranet. We measure brochure accuracy in a similar way.
Our airline’s on-time performance is also displayed daily on the intranet. In the year to 5 January 2009 some 20% of flights were delayed by 15 minutes or less and 15% by more than 15 minutes.
Internet use is high in the Nordic countries: nearly 90% of our customers visit our websites when planning their vacation and before departure. To ensure they get accurate information, we update our sites daily. Visitors can see detailed customer satisfaction ratings from the previous season for each hotel. In 2008, 36% of our properties scored four or five out of five, 51% scored three (satisfied) and 13% scored below three (not satisfied). The average customer scores for ‘overall hotel quality’ have increased year on year and our aim is to reduce the number of unsatisfactory ratings to 5% of our total bedstock.
Continental Europe
Thomas Cook Germany has a TÜV (Technical Control Board) award for service quality and customer complaint management. We have established a continuous monitoring process for product quality and introduced quality managers in many of our destinations. Top management pay close attention to the Quality Circle which meets regularly throughout the year and reports performance against set measures. As a result of this work, customer satisfaction ratings continue to rise.
In February 2008 we launched our strategic Operational Excellence project based on 50 measures to improve our price-performance ratio, the quality of our representatives, and the reliability of brochures and information provided to customers before they travel. Monthly quality reports enable our representatives in the destinations to respond to emerging problems immediately, and seasonal quality monitoring statistics give product managers and contracting departments deeper insights into the quality and performance of their products. Brochures are systematically monitored for errors so that customer service departments and service centres can provide timely information to travel agencies and customers.
Our Belgian business has a dedicated quality manager, assisted by two quality support officers, to monitor and analyse quality and drive action to improve quality and customer service. In 2008 we set up a Quality Forum where senior managers – including the CEO – are briefed about the main quality issues arising in each period.
Quality assessments are based on customer satisfaction questionnaires and reports from representatives in the destinations. In 2008, customer satisfaction ratings rose to 4.24 out of five (2007: 4.20) for the overall holiday experience and 4.21 (2007: 4.14) for hotels. All properties with a complaint score of over 7% are closely monitored and face withdrawal from the programme unless they produce a clear action plan for improvement. In 2009 we are reducing the threshold from 7% to 5%.
Targets for 2009
- Further reduce costs associated with resolving customer complaints
- Share best practice across the Group
- Continue improving the airline’s on-time performance