British Airways takes fifth place in popular brands ratings

British Airways has maintained its popularity with the British public, even in light of the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco, to be named the number five brand in the country.

The announcement of the airline high ranking came from the Superbrands Council, responsible for the survey which also named Google Britain’s number one brand.

This was an unusually good bit of news for BA, which had just made public its intention to cut capacity by three to five per cent in the coming season.

The travel industry was represented by a few other names in the top 100: Hilton came in at 20, Eurostar at 47, Virgin Atlantic placed 70th and Thomas Cook was ranked number 72.

The only travel operator making the top 100 was Thomas Cook. The company’s executive director of marketing, Simon Carter, attributed the honour to the work that Thomas Cook has done on behalf of the public, such as being a champion recently for another bank holiday.

“For the past three years, we have been steadily moving up the rankings and are now at our highest ever position in the Top 100. Best of all is the huge and ever widening gap between ourselves and the next tour operator in the list. In the whole Superbrands survey, no other first place brand beats it second place competitor by that number of positions, showing how head and shoulders our brand is above our competitors.”

Kuoni Travel came in at 340th place, and was the only other travel operator that made it into the top 500.

www.superbrands.org