Blue Ocean Strategy – Thomas Cook India – Focussing on School Student Education Tours

Thomas Cook India the oldest travel & tourism company, founded in the year 1881 was initially into foreign exchange business. In the past couple of years the company did some major acquisitions like Sterling Holidays ( time-share and holiday resorts company) in February 2014 and recently in August 2015 acquired  Kuoni's India and Hong Kong businesses including SOTC and SITA in India.  Both the acquisitions highlight the strategy adopted by Thomas Cook India which is digital business focus and targeting the emerging travel segments in India School Student Tours, Woman travellers, retired travellers and middle class travellers. Particularly Kuoni has a strong brand recall for its brands SOTC and SITA, SOTC is a very popular brand for group tours and the company will integrate Kuoni as an independent brand in the company.

Thomas Cook’s Blue Ocean Strategy is to target the school children who go on tours both domestically and foreign as part of the school learning process. A flood of international schools across India offering global curriculum and foreign languages & culture as part of the syllabus has created a unique market which is untapped and Thomas cook is the first company targeting this huge potential market. Students and parents are willing to spend for preparing their children for global education and career opportunities and this student travel market is expected to grow by 200-300% in the next few years. Thomas Cook (India) has with an aim to target the student market set up and exclusive vertical within the company 'Travel Quest Study Tours' and outreach to the students further strengthened by a travel quiz- Thomas Cook Travel Quest – India’s first national travel quiz for school students. The company is spending Rs 2-2.5 crore on media alone and around Rs 5 crore on organising the quiz programme according to Economic Times Article. The quiz program conducted in partnership with Grey Caps India (Onstage Quizzing & Knowledge Services Company) over period of four months covering 5 lakh students in classes 6 to 9, in 1100 schools and 16 cities in India. (Source: Thomas Cook Press Release)

Mr. Madhavan Menon, Managing Director, Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. said, “Today, experiential learning is clearly a vital ingredient for India’s young minds and travel is indeed the best teacher! Our national travel quiz - Travel Quest, was created post in-depth research as an engaging platform to reach out to students and educators- to look beyond the classroom and conventional methods of learning.” He added “Our strategic business intent is clear: to address the business opportunity posed by the growing student market in the absence of organised players in the market. Our aim is to bring progressive academic curriculum to life with hands on approach to learning, allowing students to engage in a healthy mix of fun and relevant education.” Mr. Menon concluded saying, “The latent demand is evident and the early response has been encouraging: our Team has as part its quiz school outreach, confirmed over 5 school student tours to destinations as diverse as Ranthambore, Singapore and Netherlands- in just over a month since we began our school outreach” (Source: Thomas cook press release). Clearly the student tour market is uncontested blue ocean market where in Thomas Cook is creating a first mover advantage and is creating good revenue potential for future growth.