Cosmos brand re-directed to trade only

Mass-market travel company Cosmos is about to become a dedicated trade-only brand, as a result of a recent direction taken by its parent company, the Monarch Travel Group.

It was decided that this re-direction could help foster closer working relationships with agents, supplemented with additional dedicated and over-branded brochures for the larger-volume retailers.

Up to this point, 35% of Cosmos sales have come directly from consumers. This will change, with the products now to be sold through new Monarch Holidays branding - Monarch Hotels and Monarch Flights.

Earlier last week, Travel Weekly revealed that the Cosmo group was reviewing its brands overall, including Archers Direct, Avro, Cosmos Holidays, Cosmos Tourama, Monarch Airlines and somewhere2stay.com.

The group is planning to operate separate direct and trade brands, after it determined that unprompted awareness of the Monarch brand was significantly higher than the Cosmos brand. Avro Flights and somewhere2stay.com will also become trade-only.

Stuart Jackson, the product and commercial director for Cosmos, denied that the decision was related to declining package sales. “We are not seeing a decline in package holidays. Agents will still come back to operators to sell packages, whether it’s for Luxor, the Gambia or villa holidays.”

Jackson agreed that the move could lead to closer ties with agents. He commented: “If it turns into more working relationships and business that’s fantastic.”

He suggested that the move would eliminate the ongoing agent complaint that operators were selling cheaper holidays directly, under the same brand.

He added: “Distrust was generated between agents and operators because of different prices. From now, the best Cosmos prices will be through the agent.

“Cosmos will only be marketed in the retail sector and prices will be dedicated to that sector. We will not compete with the trade in the direct arena.”

www.cosmos.com