BANGKOK, 21 June 2018: Thomas Cook Group, a global leisure travel corporation, has reached an agreement with Asian Trails to create a new joint venture in Thailand, effective 1 November.
It will give Thomas Cook Group, which is registered on the London stock exchange, a corporate foothold in Thailand bringing to a close decades of outsourcing its guests to various third-party tour firms.
The new joint venture company will handle all of Thomas Cook Group’s business bound for Thailand. The previous destination management companies handling the business were Travel Centre Asia, AED, EXO Travel and Asian Trails.
Earlier this month, AED informed hoteliers in Phuket of the impending changes. It served Thomas Cook’s Scandinavia holiday clients in Phuket and Khao Lak handling around 50,000 clients annually. Thomas Cook’s winter charter flights to Phuket boosted the passenger count for AED during the winter season months, November to March.
Travel Centre Asia’s Thomas Maurer represents the other big player handing Thomas Cook’s clients from Europe, particularly Germany. Maurer has enjoyed long-standing business relations with the group going back to 2002 under Thomas Cook AG and before that with its predecessor C&N.
When asked for a comment on this latest development, Maurer snapped “no comment.”
The new company, Thomas Cook In Destination Management (Thailand) Ltd is currently undergoing registration in Thailand. Details of the shareholding structure and capitalisation were not disclosed.
When it opens for business, 1 November, the new joint venture will immediately handle 100,000 Thomas Cook customers who visit Thailand every year.
In its press office statement, Thomas Cook Group said “creating a joint venture DMC in Thailand is another step forward in creating greater operational efficiency within the Thomas Cook Group.”
Similar operating models are already in place in Spain, Portugal and the USA; and this simpler approach fits the new shape of Thomas Cook and its strategy for profitable growth.
Thomas Cook Group director destination management, Michael Scheidler said: “Delivering an outstanding customer experience is at the heart of everything we do. Working with a single partner to create our own DMC, based in this important destination for the group, means that we can take greater control of the quality and consistency of service all our customers will have during their holiday.
“We already have a successful partnership with Asian Trails in the UK and look forward to building on that for the benefit of our customers from all countries.”
Asian Trails Group CEO Laurent Kuenzle added: “We are delighted at this new partnership with Thomas Cook Group for Thailand that will enable both companies to grow and achieve better synergies for the benefit of all customers.
“The commitment from our team in Thailand to make this a success has been at the forefront of this more intense collaboration with Thomas Cook UK since 2016”.
The new company’s administrative headquarters will be in Bangkok, with an operation hub opening in Phuket.
A local working party of representatives from both companies is now working to finalise the preparations, structure and begin recruitment to ensure the new business is well positioned for the start of the winter 2018/19 season.
