Member Article

Thomas Cook continues to pull out of nosedive

Harriet Green continues her turnaround of once failing travel business, Thomas Cook, as the company report summer trading in line with expectations.

In recent weeks the businesses has experienced a slow down in year-on-year bookings, although UK capacity is almost 97% sold.

Warm weather was cited as the cause for a slowdown in bookings compared to last year’s boom in holidaymaking.

Green, who is credited with a dramatic turnaround of Thomas Cook’s fortunes, said recent geopolitical events around the world, and the warmer summer weather across Europe has slowed down winter bookings, but remained confident in average selling prices.

The firm’s German airlines business is set to close the year with bookings and average selling prices both up around 3% on last year.

Chief executive, Green, said “In terms of winter holidays, we are at an early stage in the booking cycle. While we expect geopolitical events may impact destination choice, we are, following the improved integration of our business lines, offering customers a wider range of new routes and attractive vacations which we believe will provide a sound basis for continued performance into the new financial year. This combined with the continued delivery of our new product range and our cost out and profit improvement plan, give us confidence of achieving our targets and successfully implementing our strategy for profitable growth.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .