The Future of Travel. Since 1906. Annual Report 2007 - Kuoni

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0 Information technolog ilestones reached The internet gains further in importance as an advanced distri ution platform The number of customers individually combining the various components of their desired travel experience and booking their arrangement online continued to rise in 2007. Groupwide, the internet accounted for 14% of all bookings made by final Kuoni consumers in 2007, a further three-percentagepoint increase on the 11% of the previous year. At Strategic Business Unit Scandinavia, an average of some 38% of all bookings were made online, confirming the region’s pioneering role in the internet booking trend and its inhabitants’ affinity for this distribution channel. CMP system implemented in Benelux, Spain and Italy CMS launched CRM system established in the UK, Sweden and Switzerland The internet is sure to gain further in popularity as a booking medium: it is fast, it is available 24 hours a day, and its products are attractively priced. For the Kuoni Group, the internet is both an ideal information and communications tool and an effective booking channel for more straightforward products requiring little travel advice. Just as the internet is becoming more and more convenient and easy to use as a means of booking simpler travel products, however, Kuoni customers’ vacation wishes and ideas are growing increasingly complex in the premium and specialist segment. Being a simple sales platform, the internet cannot handle such complexity alone; so these customers will continue to turn to travel advisors, with their extensive experience and their specialist expertise. This is why the internet is set to meaningfully complement (rather than replace) Kuoni’s established distribution channels such as sales outlets and call centres.
In today’s competitive international marketplace, Kuoni’s protected brands are a key element in the company’s business success. With the rising popularity of the internet, the number of website addresses registered by the Kuoni Group has also increased. Kuoni has now secured and formally protected several thousand domain names worldwide, and many similar-sounding addresses have been equipped with links that redirect users to the main www.kuoni-group.com site. Work on FITA, the Future Business & IT Architecture programme, launched the previous year to effect mid-to-long-term Grouplevel enhancements to Kuoni’s IT systems, continued throughout 2007. FITA is intended to make individual business and IT processes more effective and efficient by standardising and harmonising them and reducing the number of different systems in use within the Kuoni Group. The new systems architecture that FITA should provide will feature significantly-increased flexibility and enable Kuoni to respond more dynamically to market trends. It should also help substantially reduce process and transaction costs. While launch-year work had centred on extensive analyses and detailed planning, 2007 saw various FITA actions implemented, a development that has already tangibly reduced the Group’s IT expense. Extensive work was also conducted on Kuoni’s cross-media publishing (CMP) capacities, to provide greater groupwide standardisation of publications in different media that draw on the same data basis. The activities here included selecting, designing and developing a new CMP system for the entire Kuoni Group. The new system will not only permit flexible low-cost production; it will also ensure maximum transparency in organisational, administrative and data management terms, and will help avoid data warehousing errors and redundancies. The new CMP system has already been adopted by Kuoni Benelux, Spain and Italy, and will be gradually rolled out to further business units in 2008. Information technolog Progress was also made in developing the content management system (CMS) of the Kuoni Group. Activities here included placing various websites (www.kuoni.com, www.rotunda.ch, www.private-safaris.ch and www.intens.ch) on a joint web platform. In future, the Kuoni CMS will offer various Web 1.0 and 2.0 functionalities, making the Group’s internet facilities even more attractive for its customers to use. Relationship marketing was a further focus of Kuoni’s IT activities in 2007, with the first pilot customer relationship management (CRM) projects launched in the UK, Sweden and Switzerland. These CRM facilities should document and administer all Kuoni’s customer-specific activities; and this in turn should help raise customer satisfaction, increase customer loyalty, win new customers and enhance customer focus by offering products and services that are specifically tailored to individual customer requirements. As a further benefit, the centralised management of the various data involved should provide cost savings, too. Kuoni also introduced new online distribution technology in collaboration with various partners in Scandinavia, Switzerland and India in the course of 2007. The new web-based platform permits more user-friendly booking procedures and fully-automated booking handling; and, through its module-based “dynamic packaging”, it allows customers to choose from a wide range of airlines and book their accommodation from a vast selection of Kuoni Destination Management hotel offers to compile a product that is aligned as closely as possible to their individual wishes and needs. Customers can also book combined hotel and Swiss or international rail travel arrangements at www.railtour.ch. 2008 will see the new booking platform steadily extended to further business units throughout the Kuoni Group. KUONI Annual Report 2007 1
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KUONI Annual Report 2007 The Future
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