Dr Thomas Doering will oversee Thomas Cook’s plans to become a leading European online travel agent, with former Expedia vice president Simon Breakwell continuing to act as a consultant.
Thomas Cook’s Doering to lead Euro OTA ambitions
Dr Thomas Doering will oversee Thomas Cook’s plans to become a leading European online travel agent, with former Expedia vice president Simon Breakwell continuing to act as a consultant.
Doering will keep his current brief as chief executive for Thomas Cook’s East/West Europe division, which covers operations in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe.
However, Doering does not sit on the executive board of the group.
Thomas Cook’s first half results revealed that its online operations continue to make progress. Across the entire group, bookings made via the internet came in at 24% of total sales, up from 22% in the first half of 2009.
Segmental analysis offers a further breakdown of its web performance. The UK for example, saw 32.5% of mass market bookings coming via the web, compared with 30.2% in the first six months of 2009.
Doering’s East/West Europe unit saw total sales through the web of 18.2%, a big jump on the 14.3% in 2009.
Northern Europe is its strongest online market, with 54% of total sales taken online compared with 47.5% last time.
Central Europe’s web sales remained flat at 7.4% while its North American business unit saw a slight drop from 34.7% to 33.4%.
