TraveLab features a small team of staff but the aim is to pull in ideas from across all Tui staff based in the UK.
Fraser Ellacott, distribution and sales director, said: “The innovation team will be getting together retail, contact centre and web teams to think about what innovation we can bring that really makes a difference to customers.
“This may be about how they research and book a holiday and how to support the holiday journey. “We will involve all customer-facing staff to brainstorm and come up with ideas – some of them won’t work but we hope to find some things that will stick.”
Ellacott said he hoped the company could try a few ideas over the next six months to see how they work. “We hope to find half a dozen new concepts and service enhancements, such as types of holidays or technology enhancements around how they book their holidays.
“We may come up with new ancillaries that will support our customers and add to their experience. For example, what’s the next iPhone in travel? That’s the type of innovation we’re trying to think about.”
Ellacott said it may the “simplest things” that may turn out to be the most successful of TraveLab’s innovations.
“You can have lots of great ideas but it’s the execution that really matters – can you do it really well and consistently? Does it solve a customer problem? If it doesn’t, then what’s the point of doing it? “What we really want to find are small, high-speed-to-market innovation changes. We also need to find that they are useful and can be scalable for the business.”
