First Choice Holidays to streamline Unijet

First Choice Holidays is overhauling its Unijet and First Choice holiday brands in an effort to prevent the brands targeting the same potential customers.

For the summer 2003 season, Unijet is moving away from offering a conventional mass-market package holiday, while the First Choice brand will place more emphasis on fourand five-star properties, and weed out a number of poorperforming units.

First Choice Holidays marketing director for the UK and Ireland Mike Ryan says that the company felt it had a number of brands competing internally since the acquisition of Unijet in 1998.

There will now be three Unijet brochures – Summersun, Florida and Beyond, and Greece and Turkey. Ryan says that the holidays are “positioned very much as being for customers who want more flexibility, and want to be more independent.” While holiday reps will be on hand, their presence will be low key and the children’s clubs will be dropped from the brand.

The company is to retain it Sunstart brand as a low-cost product for young adults and the budget family market. The range of holidays has been expanded and long-haul destinations, including Florida and Mexico, will feature for the first time.

Ryan says that Sunstart products were often chosen as a second or third holiday during the year. Many elements that added to the cost of the holidays have been removed, such as transfer from the airport to hotel, he says.