Tech developer intuitive hails impact of Thomas Cook OTA revival on its business

Project was delivered remotely and on time in six months and allowed firm to retain all staff

The revival of the Thomas Cook brand as an OTA was a welcome boost during the COVID-19 pandemic for London-based travel technology developer intuitive.

The heritage travel brand, now owned by Chinese parent Fosun, re-emerged this month as an OTA following its collapse a year ago.

Intuitive was chosen to supply reservation technology for the new site, a “significant deal” which the technology specialist says enabled it to retain its entire team.

Thomas Cook is using intuitive’s full end-to-end platform iVector for sourcing, selling and fulfilment.

Paul Nixon, managing director at intuitive, said intuitive’s team was able to deliver the project on time in just six months while working remotely.

“This is a wonderful project for intuitive on several levels,” he said.

“It’s a privilege to be so closely involved in the revitalisation of a much-revered brand and to play a significant role in one of the very few good news stories in travel in 2020.

“For the intuitive team, it’s been a boost to our confidence; to successfully deliver this complex project with tight timescales would have been challenging in the easiest of times, let alone the hardest.

“And, for the business, it has helped keep us all busy at a crucial time.

“Alongside other projects we’ve navigated to a fortunate position of being able to support our existing customers, both practically and financially, and retain 100% of the intuitive team going into 2021.”

As well as delivering iVector, intuitive developed a package of feature enhancements, including a fast caching capability, DealFinder, that delivers package holiday search results in under half a second.

Intuitive said it had to adapt quickly in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic and establish new collaboration initiatives and remote working procedures.

The firm said the project continued without disruption due to the joint effort between the intuitive and Thomas Cook, and other key suppliers across Europe.

Peter Yip, chief technology officer at Thomas Cook, said : “When we began developing a new Thomas Cook platform we knew customers would prioritise speed and simplicity.

“Working with intuitive has enabled us to deliver a quick and easy search function as well as connect our various components together in less than five months.”