A comment made during one of Travolution's sessions at Travel Technology Europe got us thinking.
It was from Travel Counsellor's Steve Byrne who said the big two tour operators haven't been as successful online as they would have liked.
So, we delved into the depths of our archives to see where it all began and here's a few snippets to jog your memories.
In March 2000, Thomson partnered with netdecisions to unveil the First Resort and the operator had about a 30% stake in the business.
Around the same time the operator announced plans to invest £100 million in e-commerce over a two-year period. Then in May, came the launch of the £12 million Travelchest.com, a more upmarket site that was to be non-transactional.
Thomas Cook took a different tack and kept plugging its long brand heritage as its route to online and then handing the brief to power the website to the Online Travel Corporation (later bought by lastminute.com) in October 2002.
There have been many milestones on both sides since, not least Cook's recent tie-up for Expedia to power its online dynamic packaging capability.
Back to Byrne's comment and why traditional tour operators haven't been more successful online.
The conclusion at the session was that it was a combination of culture and people - oh, and legacy technology, of course.
The other interesting conclusion was that they will probably seek online success through acquisition - watch out Travel Republic, On the Beach ...
As Traveltainment's Andrew Nicholson said during the session: "If they do get it right everyone else might as well give up because they will be dominant. But, they can't."
So, what will it take?
Posted by Linda Fox
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More content from the Travolution team, including random commentary, interesting stuff we've seen elsewhere and our usual sideways look at the travel industry.