Expanding customer-centric initiatives to build customer confidence in travel
Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, Thomas Cook India Ltd (TCIL) continues to drive meaningful innovation and initiatives to build customer confidence in travel. Changing customer behaviours and needs keeps them nimble and flexible in seizing opportunities and converting them into viable business opportunities. Rajeev Kale, President & Country Head – Holidays, MICE, Visa, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, shares more on their business and their customer-centric initiatives in the ongoing pandemic.
At TCIL, they expect to see an effect on business pick up in the coming quarters of 2021, with recovery only towards the latter half of 2021 and a full recovery in early 2022. Despite the limited reopening of international borders, they are already witnessing green shoots in bookings as well as queries. Domestic travel has played a key role in driving demand recovery, and their recovery is at approx. 30 per cent with peaks during the festive season, weekends and extended weekends.
“Announcement of the vaccine signals hope and revival for the travel and tourism sector and positive consumer sentiment is driving demand- our November bookings saw a 30 per cent surge in sales. Roll out of the vaccine will be phased and while we remain hopeful and cautiously optimistic, we also stay realistic in our outlook. Domestic Tourism will continue to be a strong focus in 2021 until the reopening of international borders and will be the pivot of our recovery plan,” tells Rajeev.
Rajeev shares more, “We have already seen green shoots with physical events for the volume driver Corporate MICE segment and this augurs well for 2021. Travel will see the evolution of an increasingly touchless world and technology will be at the forefront of much-needed initiatives such as the planned IATA digital Health passport. We look forward to the expansion of our meaningful customer-centric initiatives under our Assured Safe Travel Program and services such as Safe Holiday Helpline, COVID-negative certification services and Doctor on Call service.“
It is essential to have meticulous Health and Safety protocols at every step in the customer journey, from prebooking, booking-sales and servicing- to on ground and this should cover the entire ecosystem from transportation, airports, attractions/sightseeing and hotels and partnerships towards collaboration are vital.
At Thomas Cook India, they have taken meaningful initiatives such as:
Assured Safe Travel Program: In partnership with Apollo Clinics, the Assured Safe Travel Program ensures meticulous health and safety protocols, across every touch-point and to further assist their customers. The program also defines a series of comprehensive health and safety measures in place across every travel touch-point from airports, airlines, local transportation, hotels, restaurants and attractions and encompasses employees and suppliers, sellers and channels, including franchisees and customers.
Safe Holiday Helpline: Yet another meaningful consumer initiative, Safe Holiday Helpline is a free service to support customers in safe holiday planning offering comprehensive, country-specific information across visa-immigration regulations, health & safety protocols, on-ground destination updates, etc.
COVID-negative Certification Services: They have tied up with ICMR accredited labs to offer seamless endto-end COVID-negative certification services with contactless facilitation across India
Doctor on Call Service: This service reassures and builds customer confidence in travel and lays a strong foundation towards the revival of travel in this COVID era.
Further, their strategic partnerships with reputed brands such as Marriott
International and Accor to launch their Holiday with Confidence and Holiday Safe packages have helped reinforced their combined focus on health, hygiene and safety during travel.
The pandemic era and lockdowns have also accelerated the demand for virtual and contactless sales and service. As customers seek safe, contactless and personalized service to assist them through the complexities of holiday planning, it is imperative that the industry build user-friendly interfaces that help facilitate holiday planning, booking and payments. It is also important to ensure a seamless omnichannel experience for customers. Another key investment would also be in cyber security to ensure data safety. Greater application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will further drive automation to improve cost efficiency & productivity.
“At Thomas Cook India, we have also used technology and conceptualised Virtual Outlets and our Virtual Agency Network that enables contactless services to customers by equipping our teams (sales and servicing) with technology - to interact with consumers, as also access our critical internal systems for seamless delivery. For those who prefer our contactless services, we are assisting them via phone, chat or video call. We also launched India’s first Virtual Holiday Store and our dedicated team of travel experts will be available over video chat 365 days, from 8 am to 12 pm, to guide customers with their entire travel requirement,” assures Rajeev.
To support corporates, their business travel process was redeployed as an offsite model with bots for invoicing, refunds, streamlined processes and automated credit flow on a single platform. Their model of Centralized Service Delivery Hubs ensures seamless remote delivery. Also, their Retail Foreign Exchange counters and Wholesale Forex business restarted in May 2020, while Virtual Branches were activated to extend reach for contactless services and to serve customers anywhere. A unique Virtual Branch model was successfully implemented to facilitate contactless customer servicing. They have also operationalised a corporate and B2B booking tool to extend the reach and seamless transactions.
“Given the challenges of large-scale physical events due to the current pandemic restrictions that limit in-person engagements and large gatherings, our MICE teams have used the period of the lockdown to re-imagine our MICE business to conceptualise vibrant virtual/ digital models and platforms, advanced health & safety measures and new-age technologies. These are working very well with our MICE Corporates – to engage with their top performers and key stakeholders. We have successfully delivered exciting hybrid models and digital R&R events- our digital platform allows seamless engagement across a variety of business functions and can be scaled up to include over 100000 attendees, with every aspect of it being customisable. We expect this model to become a key tool enabling our corporate customers to engage with their business channels and employees in the new COVID era. The strong positive feedback and the number of events confirmed give us added confidence in our product,” concludes Rajeev.