The improvements mean that thomascook.com can also offer new maps, more sort functions and advanced search filters.
Russell Gould, Thomas Cook UK and Ireland e-commerce director, said: ‘Our aim is to ensure we present a realistic and impartial view of each holiday and hotel, which is why we have created the functionality for our customers to complete reviews.
'We are also introducing new processes that will allow visitors to filter to relevant reviews from similar travellers, for instance, only reviews from people who have travelled as a family with young children can be selected.’
The operator can also tailor online content based on visitor preferences or behaviour. A user looking for a snow holiday may see snow imagery on the home page, while a visitor searching for beach holidays may be shown wintersun promotions.
The ‘shortlist’ and ‘compare’ capabilities are proving particularly popular and conversion rates from visitors using these functions is more than three times the rate of other users of the website.
Gould said the conversion rate for ‘Accommodation Only’ from search to purchase has doubled and tailor-made ‘Flight & Hotel’ searches have already risen by 70%, leading to an increase in bookings of over 100% in October.
He added: ‘We still have a lot of other processes to implement, but results so far indicate we are definitely heading in the right direction with the new site.
‘Travellers will continue to use on and offline channels through their holiday research and booking journey. This new e-commerce platform is not only a website, but will quickly evolve into a multi-channel sales platform.
'Over the coming year, we will enhance it further and plan to roll it across all our sales channels.’
News of the Starfish development comes as travel technology monitor PhoCusWright predicts tour operators will buck the trend in online travel by substantially increasing their growth rates on websites. It attributes this to the strong brands and new technologies of the operators. [see link below]
See also:
Online travel growth nearing maturity (05/12/08)
TC plans more cuts if market worsens (02/12/08)
TC windows go digital (24/11/08)
thomson.co.uk most visited site (28/08/08)
Thomas Cook to drop MyTravel brand sites (01/08/08)
Travel companies lose web presence (03/06/08)