Thomas Cook Enters New Hotel Sourcing Partnership

Thomas Cook Group enters new hotel sourcing partnership

London, 18 August 2016: Thomas Cook, one of Europe's leading holiday companies, today announces the signing of a strategic hotel sourcing partnership with Webjet Limited, a leading online digital travel services provider.

Under the agreement Sunhotels, Webjet's European online accommodation business, will take responsibility for sourcing and contracting hotels that account for the majority of Thomas Cook's complementary1 business. This builds on the successful partnership that Sunhotels already has with Thomas Cook in its Nordic markets. As part of the new deal, Thomas Cook will transfer around 3,000 hotel contracts from across the group to Sunhotels. These will be added to Sunhotels's existing hotel inventory of 75,000 hotels across the world which will also be offered to Thomas Cook as part of the agreement.

The partnership will allow Thomas Cook to focus on growing its core differentiated holiday offering while at the same time providing customers with a wider range and choice of complementary hotels in a more efficient way. Sunhotels will also take responsibility for managing an improved health and safety audit process, ensuring greater certainty and consistency in the quality of the customer offering.

The move represents an important step forward in Thomas Cook's group-wide transformation programme, the New Operating Model. By moving the direct contracting for complementary hotels to a trusted partner, Thomas Cook will be able to better harmonise and simplify its IT platforms and business processes across its 15 source markets, delivering cost savings by reducing the complexity in its business.

Thomas Cook Chief Executive, Peter Fankhauser, said: "Entering this new relationship with Webjet will transform the way in which Thomas Cook offers a wide choice of hotels to customers. It provides us with a low-cost production platform for our complementary offer across all our source markets, enabling us to streamline our systems and processes while at the same time ensuring greater certainty over the quality of hotels that we offer our customers. This frees us up to focus on growing our differentiated holiday offering, the area where we know Thomas Cook can really make a difference."

-ENDS-

Note 1:

Thomas Cook's holiday offering is focused on its own-brand hotels, and a closely-managed portfolio of selected partner hotels, chosen on the basis of quality and high standards of service. This differentiated offering is supplemented with a wide range of complementary hotels that give customers greater choice and flexibility when choosing their holiday.

About Thomas Cook Group Plc.

Thomas Cook Group plc is one of Europe's leading holiday companies with sales of £7.8 billion in the year ended 30 September 2015. Thomas Cook has 22,000 employees and operates from 15 source markets; it is number one or two (by revenue) in all its core markets. Thomas Cook Group plc's shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange (TCG).

About Webjet Limited

Webjet Limited is a digital travel business providing services in both regional consumer markets as well as global wholesale markets via the online channel. Webjet Limited operates in both the B2C and B2B sectors.

The B2C Travel business operates the leading OTA consumer brands of Webjet and Zuji, as well as various market leading businesses within the Online Republic business.

The B2B Travel business sells hotels rooms to travel agent partners via the online channel. The aim is to provide a simplified business-to-business solution that places the broadest range of hotel rooms on sale worldwide to the hands of our partners, promptly, every day. Our B2B Travel business currently operates Lots of Hotels and Sunhotels.

Webjet Limited's shares are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (WEB).

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