Leisure Travel
Leisure Travel contributed 80% of Group turnover in 2006, and remains the Group’s strongest business segment. Kuoni’s core competencies are providing personal advice on holidays, devising appropriate products and distributing these via various sales channels.
The Group’s Leisure Travel business is centred on Tour Operating: organising leisure travel of all kinds, be it in the form of all-in packages or individual arrangements. It is in Tour Operating – the “nerve centre” of our leisure travel production – that Kuoni’s specialist teams select the destinations, plan the products (based on the market and demand) and conclude agreements with agents or directly with local providers for the facilities and services desired: hotel capacity, transfers, excursions and more. Distribution then takes over, organising the sale of these products to the final consumer. Parallel to this, Marketing develops the appropriate sales promotion tools.
Kuoni’s overriding goal remains the same in all these activities: to provide each of our customers with the quality products they desire, at prices that offer optimum value-for-money.
We distribute our products via various channels: our own travel agencies, agents, call centres and the Internet. Kuoni’s wide range of products is available 24 hours a day all over the world via the Group’s various websites, where customers can study, tailor and book the product that best meets their specific individual needs. These electronic distribution channels are being constantly further refined, and at Kuoni are always used in combination with more traditional sales channels.
The Kuoni Group is also developing the new generation of branch offices which are designed to convey lifestyle and ambience and appeal to visitors’ travel desires. With its contemporary look, the new concept is aimed primarily at the kind of urbane customers who are likely to turn to Kuoni’s years of experience and specialist travel advisers for their holiday needs. The new-style outlets offer lounge areas with travel libraries, touchscreen monitors for exploring the leisure travel world and (in some cases) bars and cafés. They can also be used for special events. Having established them in Paris, Strasbourg, Toulouse and Gothenburg, Kuoni opened its first new-style branch office in Switzerland, in Zurich’s fashionable Zürich West district, in January 2007.