SUDIPTA DEV – Singapore
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| Madhavan Menon |
After the stake sellout, the most important focus areas for Thomas Cook India for the next few years will be – technology integration, people strategy and decision regarding the brand. This was revealed by Madhavan Menon, MD, Thomas Cook India, in an exclusive interaction with Express TravelWorld on the sidelines of Asia Travel Leaders Summit in Singapore recently.
“The sale was from a strategic investor to a pure investor so very honestly nothing has changed. It is business as usual. The team almost remains the same, yes there have been some exits but that is natural. What has changed is not the business, but how to reinforce the business. Thomas Cook globally has had its fare share of financial problems so it was very difficult to invest in businesses when we wanted to. Our current investor runs a whole lot of general insurance companies around the world and are there for the long term. They’ve used their balance sheet to fund this so they are looking at a five-ten years scenario,” stated Menon.
Pointing out that the company is now focusing on technology, Menon said that this ranged from dealing with the internet situation to the smart phone phenomenon in the travel industry. “Our focus over the next couple of years is technology and injecting systems into the company to bring us up to power with the industry,” he stated.
Yet another important factor is the decision regarding the Thomas Cook brand. “We have the brand for twelve and a half years, we have to decide when to change it – the fifth year or the 10th or 12th year. That is a decision that we need to make. And how will we draw the roadmap. My commitment to my board is that in the next 36 months I will give a clear-cut roadmap of how we are going to make this change. Why I took 36 months is because I’m honestly not ready to focus on this factor now, there are more important things to do at present. The brand is available and we are paying a fee for it so we must capitalise on that,” stated Menon.
The third most important change that Menon is looking at is people strategy. “I think the industry is going through tremendous amount of change. One of our priorities is to train and equip people to handle this change,” he asserted.
