Thomson reorganisation targets growth areas

The UK’s leading holiday company Thomson Holidays is creating three business units and appointing a new commercial director to run them.

The three new units will be City Breaks, Ski/Mountain Lakes and Ireland.

Steve Allen, formerly sales director at the company, takes on the new role and will report to managing director Charles Newbold.

Thomson Holidays marketing director Richard Bowden-Doyle will have marketing responsibility for the remaining business and report to Newbold. The new sales director will be William Burton.

Thomson’s office in Eire – the first office outside the UK – will sell holidays with departures from Dublin for the first time.

“These are areas which offer real growth potential and we don’t want to manage them in the traditional way. We will draw on the rest of the Thomson organisation for systems and personnel support but we will be running the new units as if they were small companies. We want to be quick and flexible” says Allen.

The business units will be headed by general managers. Emma White, previously marketing manager, will head the City Breaks unit while Lee Ormesher, previously general manager sales systems, will head the Ski/Mountain Lakes unit. The general manager in Ireland will be Kevin Dufficy.

Thomson sells about 4 million holidays each year. It expects to sell approximately 50,000 City Breaks holidays and 100,000 Ski, Mountain and Lake holidays.

There are about 400,000 potential holidaymakers in Eire, with Northern Ireland adding a further 80,000 to that total.