Thomas Cook’s head of commercial sales and partnerships said there is “still work to be done” on the third party suppliers it sells to guarantee quality.
Cook axed 100 hotel partners this summer because they did not meet its standards.
Speaking at the ITT conference in Sorrento this week, Phil Gardner said Cook had strived to put the customer at the heart of the business and only sell products they were “proud of”.
“We had to make quite bold decisions,” he said. “We zoned in on quality, especially on hotel product and the airline. We dropped 100 hotels this summer.
“We had to be ruthless. It was either fix the problem or drop it.”
He added: “There is still work to be done on guaranteeing quality through other suppliers. We want our agents to be 100% proud to sell any product we have on offer.”
He said partnerships needed to “evolve” and welcomed being more “direct” and “straight talking” when it came to working together.
Since changing its approach, Gardner said the company’s net promoter score had increased by 12 points year on year.
Commenting on agent partners, Gardner said Cook had done a “huge amount of work” to re-engage with the trade which he said the company takes “a lot more seriously’. “It’s in our interest to work together,” he added.
Asked what he thought the lates market would deliver, Gardner said: “I think the lates market is proving to be quite buoyant,” he told delegates. “There is more availability this time round.
“It’s well known we have a lot of capacity in places like Turkey. Customers are responding really well to that. We do need to do a better job of moving it forward. I think if you have the price right and the product right people will look past the geopolitical issues.”
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