Maximise the value of mainstream

This year has been about making the most of our flexibility and careful management of the capacity we offer and the prices we sell at. Our trading results for the year came in as we expected in line with capacity, but with average selling prices up as we continue to grow our proportion of four and five star and all inclusive products and medium haul destinations. We also successfully managed the ‘lates’ market which is often where consumers expect to get cut price deals. As a result revenues were up 5% overall, despite a slight fall in passenger numbers.

We have also continued to streamline our mainstream businesses, looking to take ever greater advantage of the size and scale of our Group as well as continuing to remove duplication of functions and invest in systems such as automated yield management. Our reorganisation efforts have included creating a new role on our Group Executive Board of Chief Executive Officer, Group Destination Management. Pete Constanti will perform this role and he will have responsibility for hotel purchasing, agent relationships and in-destination management amongst other things. This will allow us as a Group to be much more efficient in these areas of our business. We have also restructured some of our Continental businesses, particularly Germany, to be more aligned to functional responsibilities helping to generate efficiencies and better sales processes.

In our airline business we have made a number of strategic developments. These in part were the result of our decision to retain our German airline, Condor, as part of the Group. Given this decision, we have made significant progress in identifying synergies between our various airlines and have begun to deliver significant cost savings.