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
Obviously not being in the room makes it hard to comment, but what did the speakers see the "big 2" as "doing wrong" precisely?
Last time I looked Thomson was still the number one travel brand in the UK according to Hitwise.
If you're after a one week or 2 week package holiday, to my mind there's only 3 places you'll look, none of them being OTAs.
Thanks DJ - you're right, figures wise Thomson, Expedia and lastminute constantly chase each other for that top spot. But what I guess the panel was getting at was the rise of newer entrants - Travel Republic, On the Beach, Expedia etc all jostling for position as well as the relatively low conversion rates. It wasn't necessarily that the Big 2 had done anything wrong but more failed to make more of an impact
Linda