Thomson has been forced to upgrade its technology after struggling to cope with demand for the video and TV content on its website. Head of new media Graham Donoghue said the clamour to download resort footage from its database of 1400 videos has been “ridiculous” since the turn of the year. “I had predicted we’d…
Thomson overwhelmed by demand for video content
Thomson has been forced to upgrade its technology after struggling to cope with demand for the video and TV content on its website.
Head of new media Graham Donoghue said the clamour to download resort footage from its database of 1400 videos has been “ridiculous” since the turn of the year.
“I had predicted we’d get 40,000 downloads a month. Last week we had a quarter of a million,” he said. “I don’t think anyone realised quite how popular it would be. It’s going to be big part of our strategy because it’s what people want.
“I have a 40MB pipe, which is huge, and we hit capacity because we have so much rich content that customers were viewing. I had to upgrade our bandwidth but that almost ran out and I don’t know if our hosting centre can give us any more.”
He added there were additional “technical solutions” to get round the problem.
Donoghue said business to the thomson.co.uk website has doubled in the new year, echoing comments from other online players who claimed record numbers of visitors and bookings.
“It was just incredible, beyond our wildest expectations,” he said. “We were 100% up year on year. I was expecting it to be around 35%.”
