After having witnessed 25% increase in leisure business, Thomas Cook India is expanding organically, and has opened 4 new outlets in NCR and Rajasthan. This expansion augments Thomas Cook India’s distribution and reach in North India to 42 consumer access centers: 13 owned branches and 29 Gold Circle Partner (franchise) outlets.
Company’s internal data has revealed high demand from India’s north markets, with strong growth of 25% for January- August 2017 against the same period of the previous year. The year has seen significant uptake for favorites like USA & Canada, UK, France, Switzerland and Asia’s Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia; equally for Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Emerging strongly are destinations like Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania, Japan and Bali, as also exotic locales like Georgia and Azerbaijan.
High demand was observed for Thomas Cook’s GIT/ group escorted tours and for its ad-hoc groups- comprising extended families, group of friends and millennials/ young working professionals. The millennial segment resulted in strong growth for destinations such as Bali, Maldives, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Malaysia. Another interesting growth segment was Thomas Cook’s Travel Quest- The company’s educational/ study tours which operated student groups to Europe (UK, Germany, Netherlands and the Czech Republic) USA, and Asia’s Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, etc.
Rajeev Kale, President & Country Head Leisure Travel & M.I.C.E at Thomas Cook (India) said “North India is a powerful source market for us at Thomas Cook India and we are witnessing strong growth of over 25% YoY across our Leisure Travel businesses lines. Our strategic intent is to maximise on this market potential via organic expansion and we’ve carefully selected high footfall centres for our new outlets in prime catchment locations within the larger NCR metro market; also Jodhpur in Rajasthan”.
