GROUP CONTENT DOING IT ONCE DOING IT WELL
Here’s the second of our updates on the MAKIS programme
Dear colleagues,
 In November last year, I shared our plans to transform our many local Content Production functions into one international Group Content team – known internally as the MAKIS programme. We covered how the Group Content team will work hand in hand with our destination teams, to produce rich, informative and accurate content once, for the benefit of our source markets.
We have a lot more to look forward to over the coming months. We’ll go live with the systems that will link us to Expedia and we will take advantage of the rich content they will provide for City and Domestic hotels. I hope you enjoy this update. Kind regards,
In the last 6 months, we have made huge progress. We have reached agreement on the overall proposal with the EWC, and have now finalised the new organisational structure and appointed managers into the Group Content team. We are also recruiting for 17 new, international roles. We have defined how the content process will work and have started the roll out of our new systems for storing and distributing content. This will deliver a number of benefits, including a dramatic shortening of the lead time between making a content change and that change being visible to online customers. We have also agreed to keep brochure production in-house and are looking at how we automate and streamline the process. When it comes to using richer content, we have already changed the online page layout in the UK for a number of our differentiated hotels. In this ezine, you will see how these new web pages have been transformed, containing more hotel information, presented in a way that makes it really easy for our customers to find what they are looking for.
Magnus Wikner Chief of Nordics Source Markets, Group Marketing & CX
Need a recap on what MAKIS is all about? DOING IT ONCE DOING IT WELL
Creating one international Thomas Cook Content production team that delivers informative, consistent content for our customers once, for the benefit of all brands and markets
Click here to view our first ezine.
All proposals contained within this document are subject to consultation according to local requirements.
We caught up with Anneka Baarsen, President of the EWC, to hear her thoughts on how the consultation went. 2
WHO’S WHO IN GROUP CONTENT Our Group Content team will be made up of colleagues from many different countries. Below is the organisation chart, by clicking on the photos you will be able to hear directly from Senior Managers – Daniele, Patrik, Stina, Susannah and Jo - and what their teams will be working on.
Daniele Mercante Group Head of Content
Senior Local Content Manager Req ID: 30223
Patrik Marklund Senior Content Sourcing Manager
Local Content Editors BE/NL
Sourcing Manager Differentiated Req ID: 30227
Local Content Editors Sweden Norway
Sourcing Manager Complementary Req ID: 30228
Stina Möllstam Senior Product & Geo Content Manager
Susannah O’Grady Senior Customer Content & Quality Manager
Group Product & Geo Content Editor Lead Req ID: 30229
Content Quality Manager Req ID: 30232
Group Product & Geo Content Editors Req ID: 30230
Content Service Manager Req ID: 30234
Joanna Jones Senior Publishing Manager (Seconded)
Denmark Finland UK
Image Editors Req ID: 31605
Content Manager UGC
Continental Europe Content Editor UGC Req ID: 30231
All proposals contained within this document are subject to consultation according to local requirements.
NEW GROUP CONTENT ROLES We have 17 exciting new roles available. These are highlighted in orange on the organisation chart above. These roles are key to delivering our Group Strategy and are focused on sourcing and developing rich, informative and accurate content for our own brand and selected partner hotels. We believe these new roles are some of the best content roles in Europe! To find out more or to apply, click on the role you are interested in, log into MyPAD, click on MyPAD Careers and enter the Req ID to see the full Job Description. The closing date is the 24th June. We are still consulting with the local Works Councils and hope to appoint colleagues into these roles as fast as possible. If you have any queries please contact the Senior Manager of the appropriate team or your local HR team. To introduce the new Group Content teams, we ran some Discovery Sessions in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Oberursel, Ghent and Peterborough. These sessions were well attended and as you will see in the video, colleagues received really useful insights into the new teams and roles. 3
GROUP CONTENT HOW IT WILL WORK Content will come into the Group Content team from different sources and be uploaded into our Content systems. All content will be quality checked and the team will edit the content for our differentiated hotels. Differentiated hotels
Complementary hotels
Customer reviews & photos
iDM team
Our Content systems now hold 290,000 images for 15,433 hotels, 912 hotel videos, 316,000 hotel facts, 1,239 room plans and 2 million customer reviews.
That’s a lot of content but we are expecting this to grow massively when the team is up and running.
Our content systems will be linked to both our own and 3rd party web systems. So when we update content, the changes will automatically flow through and are live on the hotel’s web page in just 10 minutes. In the past this took a week!
10 MINUTES
Now when we create a new season brochure, we have to check and update the content we hold for hotels before we can complete the brochure design. In the future, content will be updated in real time saving significant time and effort. In January, we will start a market trial of our new slick brochure production system (CMI24). This video shows how we will use content to populate defined page templates and then export these ready for print. Please note: the video uses subtitles and has no sound.
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HOW OUR CUSTOMERS WILL BENEFIT Creating great content is really only the start. Presenting this content in brochures or online, in a way that engages and inspires customers to choose Thomas Cook for their next holiday is equally important. We have just improved the design of the web pages for 36 of our differentiated hotels. The new page design contains so much more information. Customers can easily navigate the pages and quickly find what they are looking for to book their perfect holiday. It’s just as easy on mobiles too.
Before: Customers told us there was too much free text which made it difficult to find information. Now: Information is provided in expandable sections, which reduces the amount of scrolling required and puts the customer in control of the information they want to see.
When choosing a holiday, location is very important to customers. Before: We didn’t provide customers with enough information and they had to search other sites for the answers to key questions.
These expandable sections also make it really easy to browse on mobile screens. Now: We provide the key information they want in a drop down box.
Before: Customers found the room information confusing. The difference between room types was unclear which generated lots of queries. Now: We show customers what features are common to all rooms …
… and what additional features you get if you upgrade.
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This business is changing! Our thanks to all those involved in bringing our new content team to life.
www.thomascook.com THI.UK.005