tui group case study

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TUI France: Building a data-driven media strategy on Google Marketing Platform and Google Cloud

World-leading tourism group TUI offers the full travel experience in 180 regions. It comprises 1,600 travel agencies and online portals, five airlines, 400+ hotels, 18 cruise liners, tour operators, and more in all major global holiday destinations.

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About Artefact

Global digital and data company Artefact transforms data into value for organizations with agile methodologies and best-in-class expertise.

With CRMint, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Cloud AI, TUI consolidates its data into one place and analyzes it for more effective ad targeting and reduced media spend.

Google cloud results.

• Drives insight from customer data with CRMint, Google Marketing Platform, and BigQuery
• Identifies which customers are most interested in making a purchase with 91% accuracy using Google Cloud AI
• Enables more relevant ads with automated, data-driven decision-making for lower media costs

CRMint helps reduce cost per sale on display by 7.5x

A subsidiary of the multinational TUI Group, TUI France is a leading tour operator in France, offering a wide and diverse range of travel and accommodation for individuals as well as businesses in 100 destinations. TUI’s offering is available in 4,000 travel agencies and stores and on its showcase website, which was among the top 20 most visited travel websites in France in 2019, according to Médiamétrie.

“We wanted to bring data-driven decision-making to our media strategy to keep our current customers happy as well as attract new ones. We’re already big users of Google Marketing Platform, so using Google Cloud to power a data platform was the obvious choice.”

But online travel is a competitive market, and TUI France has needed to continually adapt and build on its successes. In late 2018, TUI France sat down with marketing specialists and Google Cloud partner Artefact to hammer out a digital road map. Artefact had already helped TUI France fine-tune its marketing campaigns using Google Marketing Platform and products such as Google Analytics and Google Ads . The goal now was to make use of all the marketing data available to optimize the company’s strategy. To make that happen, TUI France turned to Google Cloud .

“We wanted to bring data-driven decision-making to our media strategy to keep our current customers happy as well as attract new ones,” says Hamis Badarou, Head of Digital Analytics at TUI France. “We’re already big users of Google Marketing Platform, so using Google Cloud to power a data platform was the obvious choice.”

360 analytics with Google Cloud and Google Marketing Platform

Effective marketing campaigns are great drivers of business, but in order to last, they have to be value for money. TUI France wanted to reduce the cost of its ad spend and media investments. “The travel industry is very competitive, so we wanted to be sure that TUI France was investing in the right channels, at the right time, and targeting the right prospects with high potential for the business,” says Natacha Kocupyr, Head of Media Consulting at Artefact.

To achieve that, TUI France would have to take its data analytics capabilities to a new level. The first step was simply to consolidate the data all in one place. Using Google Marketing Platform for its campaigns had already led to a wealth of data that the company was investigating with Google Cloud products like BigQuery . However, there was also a significant amount of useful data on customer behavior in TUI France’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Together, the two datasets would form a powerfully compelling picture of TUI France’s customers and what they needed. Unfortunately the CRM data and the data on Google Marketing Platform were stored separately and in different formats. Reconciling them would take significant resources.

In 2019, while TUI France was deep in the planning of its digital transformation, Google Marketing Platform released CRMint , an open source orchestration tool. Hosted on App Engine , CRMint allows companies to link their CRMs with a host of Google products. TUI France’s situation presented a great challenge for the new tool, so representatives from Google Marketing Platform worked closely with data scientists from the company and Artefact to help integrate the CRM data with what had already been collected in BigQuery.

“The beauty of AI Platform is that it works locally as well as in the cloud. That meant we could test it locally, and then when we went into production, we could host it on App Engine and not have to worry about scale.”

“Getting the CRM data, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Cloud to talk to each other seemed like a difficult task, but with an orchestration tool like CRMint, it wasn’t hard at all,” says Hamis.

With the two main datasets harmonized and collated in BigQuery, TUI France and Artefact could concentrate on the next phase: predictions. Data scientists from both companies analyzed the data using BigQuery and fed the results through a machine learning algorithm built with AI Platform . The algorithm helps TUI France figure out which customers visiting its website are just browsing and which ones are looking to make a purchase.

It was important for Artefact that the platform was adaptable. “We didn’t just want to come up with a solution for one day. It needed to be able to detect changes in the data and respond accordingly,” says Natacha. For that reason, the algorithm is retrained with fresh data every week. Using a cloud-hosted service like AI Platform meant that TUI France didn’t have to sink costs on hardware that would only be used once a week.

“The beauty of AI Platform is that it works locally as well as in the cloud,” says Iliass Benryanne, Data Scientist at Artefact. “That meant we could test it locally, and then when we went into production, we could host it on App Engine and not have to worry about scale.”

Based on the AI scores, TUI is able to not only prioritize bids, but work on lookalike strategies for its display campaigns, identifying key similarities between people from its original custom audience and finding similar audiences to reach in a new campaign. This enables TUI to target its messages to people who are more likely to book its offers.

“Google Cloud has helped us tighten the focus on our media channel targeting and make our ad spend work harder. The cost of sales on our display channel is 7.5 times lower than before while the cost of bringing customers to the website has gone down by 29%.”

Greater precision, more effective targeting

After six months of planning and testing, and a further period of building and refining, the new data platform went into production. By early 2020, TUI France was already seeing dramatic improvements. Consolidating all of its customer data onto one platform provided a number of powerful insights about customer behavior that simply weren’t available before. The AI predicted the customers most interested in making a purchase with 91% accuracy, leading to a much more effective media strategy.

“Google Cloud has helped us tighten the focus on our media channel targeting and make our ad spend work harder,” says Hamis. “On our display channel, the cost per sale is 7.5 times lower than before while the cost of bringing customers to the website has gone down by 29%.”

But for TUI France, the work doesn’t stop with lowering the cost of customer acquisition. The insights gained have opened the door to all sorts of other projects. In the short term, TUI France is building a recommendation engine that will feed emails and the website with relevant content. Customers who visit the site will see a personalized homepage with banners and offerings tailored to their needs.

“Combining Google Marketing Platform and Google Cloud in this way has led to some really exciting results,” says Hamis. “I’m keen to expand this type of initiative across the entire marketing department so we can have some truly data-driven decision-making.”

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Impact and Tui Case Study

October 16, 2020 | 6 min read

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TUI Group is the world’s number one tourism business with 1600 travel agencies and over 300 hotels

Impact had clear objectives for achieving a successful migration that reduced disruption. Migration of all revenue-driving partners had to be completed within four weeks and the partner base had to be audited so desired partners experienced a seamless transition within six weeks. With Impact’s expertise as a leading technology provider, TUI expected flexible reporting to enable ongoing programme optimisation and a 0% change in cost-per-acquisition (CPA) to maintain programme efficiency. Perhaps, more significantly, TUI was aiming for 20% partnership programme growth as a result of the migration. Ultimately, TUI was steadfast in its goal to execute a well-oiled migration strategy.

To deliver the objectives, Impact divided the migration into three core areas. These were publisher migration, reporting migration and implementation of an updated commission structure.

Partners were segmented into three tiers so TUI could identify their top-performing partners. Impact Partnership Cloud then automated communication to all but TUI’s top-tier publisher partners, whom TUI contacted individually. MediaRails, Impact’s partner CRM tool was the focal point of the publisher migration. The tool automated communication to lower-tier partners then tracked and assessed the overall migration progress over time.

Automating these partnerships improved programme efficiency and saved TUI vast amounts of time on an otherwise manual task. Simultaneously, Impact collaborated with TUI’s agency Neo to perform a partner audit to trim down the programme to a manageable size and retain only high-quality, highly engaged partners. Impact technology identified inactive and low-quality partners so TUI could reduce programme bloat by removing those partners from the campaign.

Automation also played a key role in migration reporting and TUI sought a practical solution that provided the right data in the right format and eliminated time-consuming data pulls. These reports needed to highlight key metrics to help TUI understand specific partner and category performance, then optimise accordingly. These requirements led Impact to build the TUI Performance Report. This custom report provided a single report that can pivot around multiple KPIs including airport departure and destination. The single report can be configured to include or exclude any KPI’s to give stakeholders a custom view of performance.

To complete the migration, TUI implemented an updated commissioning structure based on Impact’s highly flexible Dynamic Payouts. This allowed TUI to pay out on any tracked data point, or combination of data points. This new structure created improved efficiency for the programme since TUI could commission specifically on the actions and partners that created value whilst substantially growing the programme.

To execute the migration of the UK’s largest travel affiliate programme, Impact knew cutting edge technology and innovation would need to be at the heart of the strategy. In order to meet TUI’s marketing goal of 20% partnership programme growth, Impact extensively leveraged their innovative automation technology MediaRails, to achieve a smooth and disruption-free migration. This automated CRM solution enabled Impact and TUI to effectively migrate publishers by segmenting them into tiers then automating communication. A workflow was implemented to send a drip email campaign to partners alerting them to bespoke signup links regarding commission rates for example. Partners who failed to respond to these initial emails were sent automated reminders with increasingly time sensitive, relevant copy. This ensured that partners were consistently and regularly targeted with messaging to ensure a smooth and efficient migration.

One of MediaRails’ great USPs is its API integration with other providers. Impact built a custom migration tracker that indicated partner level progress including whether they had signed up to the TUI programme on Impact, started driving traffic and delivered revenue. Additionally, TUI pulled in KPIs from the incumbent network to monitor if the same partner was still driving revenue through the previous provider. This provided a ‘seesaw’ view of each partner showing whether they had fully migrated, partially migrated or not yet started, and the communication they had received.

TUI could then create partner workflows dependent on certain scenarios. For example, if a partner had active revenue in the last 30 days but for some reason their revenue dropped to 0 in the last 7 days - TUI could reach out to them.

Migrating five brands and thousands of publishers from an indentured affiliate network was no easy feat. Fortunately, as a result of Impact’s expertise and innovative automation technology, TUI was not only able to migrate the programme smoothly, they also achieved a phenomenal 49% revenue growth in the month after migration. More significantly, Impact was able to successfully migrate 95% of revenue-driving partners in half of the targeted time period.

Impact’s updated commissioning capabilities allowed TUI to improve optimisation and achieve the goal of remaining CPA neutral and subsequently reduce CPA by 4%.

MediaRails automated communication helped to effectively migrate publishers, while Impact’s custom automated reporting eliminated time-consuming data pulls and manipulation.

The audit of the publisher base was successfully completed within the targeted timeframe and significantly reduced the number of partners by 70%, improving programme hygiene and leaving TUI with a set of partners that were engaged, on-brand and ready to promote TUI. Ultimately, this led to increased focus on active publishers and improved growth.

With innovative automation at the heart of this mammoth migration project, Impact, alongside TUI’s agency Neo, was able to achieve a significant partnership programme revenue increase accompanied by a healthy 30% growth in passenger volume.

Through automated partner communication, custom reporting and improved commissioning structures, TUI was not only able to successfully migrate their programmes, but also to achieve a phenomenal 49% revenue growth. Migration of the UK’s largest travel affiliate programme was no easy task but Impact was able to update, streamline, and optimise in one migration. To meet TUI’s goal of 20% partnership programme growth with minimal business disruption, Impact implemented innovative automation technology to execute a smooth transition for programme partners within half the targeted time period. Ultimately, by partnering with Neo, Impact was able to migrate 95% of revenue-driving partners successfully.

How can you prove that your cloud strategy has really delivered the desired business benefits? 

TUI Group is the world’s largest integrated tourism organization headquartered in Hanover, Germany. With more than 50 years in the tourism industry, TUI is serving more than 27 million customers every year.

Staying true to its mission of “Excellence in leisure experiences”, the company brings its customers to over 180 destinations worldwide, providing flexible, tailor-made travel experiences. With 4,400 hotels in over 30 countries, five airlines with 130 aircrafts, and 16 cruise ships and more than 1,000 travel agencies, TUI also provides its customers with multi-destination trips with over 5,000 combinations to choose from.

TUI has fundamentally transformed its IT landscape with a consistent cloud strategy. In the course of their cloud journey, TUI moved the data center-based workloads distributed throughout Europe to the cloud, replaced software systems with cloud-enabled solutions, and reorganized their IT teams. With the concept of TUI’s so-called “Domain Model”, global cloud-native applications have replaced existing local, isolated solutions across all markets. Since starting the transformation at the beginning of 2018, the core foundational technology implementation is complete alongside with the organization transformation and the migration of services from legacy systems continues as planned with a target to close our physical data centers by 2025.

This comprehensive technology transformation with a focus on efficiency and dynamic scaling also required a rethinking of IT financial management.

Customers served by TUI every year

Reduction in cloud cost in 2020, without compromising business continuity

TUI aimed to achieve cost efficiencies by bringing full visibility to cloud spend across all accounts and service providers, including container, support, and shared services charges. This was achieved through the implementation of Apptio Cloudability. The platform enables continuous correlation of cloud spend against business objectives, with reporting at the application and business-unit levels.

TUI’s Cloudability implementation has enabled informed cloud investment decision-making and better budget tracking at the team level. With machine learning-backed planning and forecasting, Cloudability has also provided timely visibility into trends and cost anomalies, allowing IT teams to work with business units to evaluate appropriate actions and possible optimization opportunities.

“With the centralized Apptio platform for cloud financial management, we now have a unified database for technology costs and planning from IT to finance to business departments and management,” said Yasin Quareshy, Head of Technology, Cloud, at TUI Group. “For a better understanding of cost/value analyses, each role has an individual view of the areas relevant to them.”

The end-to-end view of the business value realized via their cloud infrastructure supports TUI’s technology change management toward a FinOps culture: cross-departmental collaboration for Agile innovation, decentralized decision-making, and rapid adaptation to change using control mechanisms or metrics.

To do this, Apptio Cloudability streamlined chargeback and showback processes. This means that IT Finance can assign business units the cloud resources they were responsible for and invoice them accurately. “This increases cost awareness for IT and encourages teams to optimize cloud workloads for maximum profitability,” said João Vieira Santos, Head of  Technology, TUI.

To establish the FinOps culture among geographically dispersed IT teams, the first step was implementing Apptio Cloudability and then training a central user group. FinOps best practices were established during this process and shared with the teams that were subsequently trained to ensure consistency across the company in cloud-focused frameworks and processes.

Where and to what extent the cloud strategy has led to greater agility, scalability, and value creation at TUI was clearly demonstrated during the past three turbulent years. In 2019, for example, IT capacity was immediately expanded to meet increased demand following the insolvency of the global travel group Thomas Cook. A year later, countervailing measures were required, said Yasin Quareshy.

“With the slump in tourism in 2020, we were able to cut cloud costs in half without affecting business continuity, for example, by reducing resource consumption in testing and development,” said Yasin Quareshy. “Via Apptio Cloudability, we were able to analyze the cost savings globally, and correlate individual adaptation measures against the groups that were affected. In addition, the platform provides recommendations, such as rightsizing and reserved instance purchasing, that helped us identify cost optimization opportunities”.

In the current economic recovery phase, TUI is resuming some of the cloud and IT development projects that were halted. To be prepared for future market fluctuations, the concept of unit economics is being considered. Here, key metrics surfaced within Cloudability are intended to ensure that the relationship between cloud consumption and the performance of the individual business units can be optimally managed. The aim is to use this to capture the current state so that the CloudOps groups can align the provisioning and use of cloud resources with business conditions.

TUI’s Cloudability implementation ultimately allowed them to demonstrate the value of their cloud spend and strategy while keeping their cloud costs low and maintaining agility in operations.

TUI Group (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a travel and tourism company headquartered in Hanover, Germany. With more than 50 years in the tourism industry, TUI is serving more than 27 million customers every year.

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TUI Group’s International Operations Essay

How has tui ag configured its operations internationally in order to serve its various markets what benefits does this provide are there any disadvantages.

In 1990, Germany Company Preussag AG reinvented into TUI AG Company. From its initial stage, TUI AG Company concentrated in container shipping and tourism industries. Over years TUI AG company has divested in industrial holding and to date, it serves diverse global companies within the tourism supply chain such as tour operators, travel agencies, and distribution channels like call centers, TV channels, and online travel business), hotels and airlines.

To expand globally TUI AG Company has acquired new international companies. Although these newly acquired companies do not change their original brands they remain property of TUI Group. It operates a large container shipping companies with more than 140 vessels. It manages an integrated (horizontally and vertically) tourism supply chain by owning numerous tourism companies each one of them performing different key functions throughout its distribution chain.

In addition to the joint venture and acquiring new companies, TUI AG Company has merged with other companies. TUI AG Company configuring its operations internationally has benefits such as creating synergies among its companies and establishing and controlling quality levels across all elements of the tourism products from purchasing, transportation, incoming tour handling, destination excursions, accommodation, and ground handling.

An integrated tourism supply chain also enables the group to achieve high utilization and occupancy rates within its tourism supplier companies. Also, TUI AG Company configuring its operations internationally has strengthened it. This has heavily contributed to its growth. It has increased its efficiency and services quality, access to cheap inputs, and diversification of its market. Disadvantages involved in TUI AG Company configuring its operations internationally include increasing operating expenses, strict foreign regulations and standards, and an unfamiliar business environment.

What is the strategy preferred by TUI AG in penetrating new international markets? What are the benefits of this strategy? Are there any disadvantages?

The major strategy used by TUI AG Company is to constantly hold the top niche in its service delivery and keep in line with new trends. It has restructured and re-branded its companies to similar groups. In addition, it has re-engineered its business model and embraced internet technology to provide tourists with information. Merging with other existing companies along with acquisitions new companies and joint ventures are market penetration techniques used by TUI AG Company.

To efficiently penetrate the international market TUI AG Company uses a differentiation strategy. It ensures that their services are quite unique and of high quality compared to competitor companies. Each of TUI AG company markets has its own distribution strategy.

This strategy is meant to satisfy wide range of customers globally and suite the fast changing market. TUI AG company travel has market leading positions in independent travel including online specialist holidays, accommodation, and adventure. Relentlessly, TUI AG Company does research to invent new services to conquer niche market. This strategy has led to TUI AG Company growth internationally. It also uses online distribution channels strategy within the accommodation sector.

The benefits of this strategy include chances that TUI AG can influence economies of scale. When it provides the same service worldwide, it can secure labor at low cost, potentially saving on TUI AG Company’s annual expenditure. Disadvantage of this strategy is that one strategy does not efficiently suite all markets. There is great diversity in market demand and requires different strategy to approach it. There is large risky involved in TUI AG strategy in penetrating new international markets in relation to change of corporation and employment laws which vary among countries.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 1). TUI Group's International Operations. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tui-groups-international-operations/

"TUI Group's International Operations." IvyPanda , 1 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/tui-groups-international-operations/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'TUI Group's International Operations'. 1 November.

IvyPanda . 2023. "TUI Group's International Operations." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tui-groups-international-operations/.

1. IvyPanda . "TUI Group's International Operations." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tui-groups-international-operations/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "TUI Group's International Operations." November 1, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/tui-groups-international-operations/.

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TUI Leverages Cloudability to Gain End-to-End Cloud Cost Transparency and Dynamic Scalability

“Via Apptio Cloudability, we were able to analyze the cost savings globally and correlate individual adaptation measures against the groups that were affected. In addition, the platform provides recommendations, such as rightsizing and Reserved Instances purchasing, that helped us identify cost optimization opportunities.” Yasin Quareshy Head of Technology, Cloud TUI

Can you prove that your cloud strategy has really delivered the desired business benefits? Travel group TUI took a fundamental look at this question while combining its “Agile Cloud Journey” with FinOps. The result: the business value of their cloud investment is clear down to the application level and continues to be optimized.

TUI Group is the world’s largest integrated tourism organization headquartered in Hanover, Germany. With more than 50 years in the tourism industry, TUI is serving more than 27 million customers every year.

Staying true to its mission of “Excellence in leisure experiences”, the company brings its customers to over 180 destinations worldwide, providing flexible, tailor-made travel experiences. With 4400 hotels in over 30 countries, five airlines with 130 planes, and 16 cruise ships and more than 1000 travel agencies, TUI also provides its customers with multi-destination trips with over 5,000 combinations to choose from.

TUI has fundamentally transformed its IT landscape with a consistent cloud strategy. In the course of their cloud journey, TUI moved the data center-based workloads distributed throughout Europe to the cloud, replaced software systems with cloud-enabled solutions, and reorganized their IT teams. With the concept of TUI’s so-called “Domain Model”, global cloud-native applications have replaced existing local, isolated solutions across all markets. Since starting the transformation at the beginning of 2018, the core foundational technology implementation is complete alongside the organizational transformation and the migration of services from legacy system continues as planned with a target to close our physical data centers by 2025.

This comprehensive technology transformation with a focus on efficiency and dynamic scaling also required a rethinking of IT financial management.

Tying IT costs to business value

TUI aimed to achieve cost efficiencies by bringing full visibility to cloud spend across all accounts and service providers, including container, support, and shared services charges. This was achieved through the implementation of Apptio Cloudability. The platform enables continuous correlation of cloud spend against business objectives, with reporting at the application and business-unit levels.

TUI’s Cloudability implementation has enabled informed cloud investment decision-making and better budget tracking at the team level. With machine learning-backed planning and forecasting, Cloudability has also provided timely visibility into trends and cost anomalies, allowing IT teams to work with business units to evaluate appropriate actions and possible optimization opportunities.

Creating a FinOps culture based on cost accountability

“With the centralized Apptio platform for cloud financial management, we now have a unified database for technology costs and planning from IT to finance to business departments and management,” said Yasin Quareshy, head of technology, cloud, TUI. “For a better understanding of cost/value analyses, each role has an individual view of the areas relevant to them.”

The end-to-end view of the business value realized via their cloud infrastructure supports TUI’s technology change management toward a FinOps culture: cross-departmental collaboration for Agile innovation, decentralized decision-making, and rapid adaptation to change using control mechanisms or metrics.

To do this, Apptio Cloudability streamlined chargeback and showback processes. This means that IT Finance can assign business units the cloud resources they were responsible for and invoice them accurately. “This increases cost awareness for IT and encourages teams to optimize cloud workloads for maximum profitability,” said João Vieira Santos, head of technology, TUI.

Rolling out FinOps best practices across dispersed IT teams

To establish the FinOps culture among geographically dispersed IT teams, the first step was implementing Apptio Cloudability and then training a central user group. FinOps best practices were established during this process and shared with the teams that were subsequently trained to ensure consistency across the company in cloud-focused frameworks and processes.

Optimizing cloud investments in volatile markets

Where and to what extent the cloud strategy has led to greater agility, scalability, and value creation at TUI was clearly demonstrated during the past three turbulent years. In 2019, for example, IT capacity was immediately expanded to meet increased demand following the insolvency of the global travel group, Thomas Cook. A year later, countervailing measures were required, said Yasin Quareshy.

“With the slump in tourism in 2020, we were able to cut cloud costs in half without affecting business continuity, for example, by reducing resource consumption in testing and development,” said Yasin Quareshy. “Via Apptio Cloudability, we were able to analyze the cost savings globally, and correlate individual adaptation measures against the groups that were affected. In addition, the platform provides recommendations, such as rightsizing and Reserved Instances purchasing, that helped us identify cost optimization opportunities”.

Business-oriented scaling of IT guided by unit economics

In the current economic recovery phase, TUI is resuming some of the cloud and IT development projects that were halted. To be prepared for future market fluctuations, the concept of unit economics is being considered. Here, key metrics surfaced within Cloudability are intended to ensure that the relationship between cloud consumption and the performance of the individual business units can be optimally managed. The aim is to use this to capture the current state so that the CloudOps groups can align the provisioning and use of cloud resources with business conditions.

TUI’s Cloudability implementation ultimately allowed them to demonstrate the value of their cloud spend and strategy while keeping their cloud costs low and maintaining agility in operations. For more information about Cloudability, visit Apptio.com/Cloudability .

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FinOps: A New Approach to Cloud Financial Management

The Fast Track Guide to SAFe Implementation

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 TUI CASE STUDY

Store level segmentation, consumer brand profiling, location planning & analysis.

“We are excited to be working with S2, to explore the benefits of their Customer Insight. S2’s knowledge adds considerable value to our processes and disparate data pools.”

Amanda Lakin, General Manager Retail & Local, Tui

TUI wanted to gain an understanding of their database taking into account individual customer profiles, behaviour and transactional history in order to create a tailored marketing approach for POS and on and offline promotional activity across all retail stores.

This required the development of pen personas and prospect mapping profiles to support each ABTA agent in aligning their promotional signage and holiday offers to match the people living and working in the local community. 

For example, displaying holidays that are the closest match to the people passing, or luxury cruises in high affluence areas with a significant percentage of the population matching the relevant Mosaic profile.

To make effective marketing decisions, TUI needed accurate, store-level information that relates to the local shoppers and consumers, recognising external factors that can effect purchasing behaviour and store performance comparisons.

Our Approach

S2 provided tabulations of the top destinations overall and then created drill down tables for each shop highlighting the top 3 destinations for use in determining shop level promotions. Profiling destinations and products by Mosaic groups identified commonality within brands and aided the creation of look-up matrices for future promotional material. This also identified areas of opportunity where shop catchment profile and current booking profile divergence occurred.

TUI were provided with pen persona profiles that enabled brand and product promotions mapped against classified customer segments within catchment areas. This now affords the ability to implement the most effective shop promotions for each individual store resulting in a ‘pick list’ for each shop.

The revenue uplifts from this type of activity are achieved by focusing on maximising the effective selling space of TUI’s shops by tailoring promotions to trigger driving footfall into the store.

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• TUI delivers a more positive retail customer experience with Cloudfm

With the support of a dedicated account manager and the team of experts at Cloudfm, TUI has been able to achieve substantial efficiencies in FM spend. This, along with notable improvements in quality and service delivery, has directly contributed to an improved TUI customer experience.

The TUI Group is the world’s leading integrated tourism business, catering for 20 million holidaymakers per year, and with over 25% of UK & Ireland travel purchases taking place within their 570 properties, the highest standard of building maintenance and upkeep is vital for the business.

As part of their strategy for growth from retail outlets, TUI UK & I have created 80 new format stores which offer an innovative way for customers to book their holidays. Realising the company’s mission to engage customers and create unforgettable holiday moments from the booking to the journey home, these destination stores offer immersive video walls, virtual reality headsets and interactive touchscreen maps – set in different zones, such as ‘family’ and ‘long-haul’.

With the retail experience of such importance, when TUI UK & I looked to retender their facilities management, their priority was to engage a provider offering high-quality services that support the retail estate and its dedicated store teams. Additionally, operating in a heavily regulated industry, transparent reporting, assurance on compliance and real-time financial controls were key requirements.

Following a rigorous selection process, Cloudfm was chosen as the provider for management and delivery of all hard services across the full retail estate, including the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The alignment between the business’s desire to be innovative in their respective markets, as well as Cloudfm’s multi-site expertise, and transparency in the commercials and delivery, were all cited as reasons for their selection.

Cloudfm’s industry-leading software and processes – which provide TUI UK & I with real-time financial reporting, compliance data, and task management – have improved the quality of the estate.

Additionally, the provider’s unique management tools and system platform mean that responsibility for inputting data resides with the engineer on site, measured by the minute to ensure the client only pays for the value delivered.

For the first time it has become possible for TUI UK & I to have complete visibility of all maintenance activity and costs in real time, simultaneously improving quality, compliance and value for money.

Main Outcomes

• Average Job Value has been reduced from £290 to £240, which saved TUI UK & I £209,000 over the first full year of the contract.
• Proactive Monthly Visits reduced the task volume by almost 24% in the first year (from 5,500 to 4,200). The ability to log Odd Jobs completed on planned visits resulted in a saving of over £240,000.
• With store managers logging the jobs themselves, the process is faster – with a clear audit trail, and greater visibility and accountability at building level.
• TUI UK & I’s FM team focus on strategic improvements and not chasing contractors. Suppliers can now be measured and evaluated on a like-for-like basis, improving performance across the estate.

During the tender process, we could see that Cloudfm were best in class. With their innovative systems, transparent reporting and real-time data, it was clear that they would be the best fit for our business – and we were confident they could deliver on their promises, too, since they had the data to back up their claims. As a company, we employ a high level of due diligence with regards to financial spend. From the start, we could see that Cloudfm’s processes would make it incredibly easy for us to demonstrate where we are spending money.

At any point of the day, I can look on the Cloudfm portal and obtain real-time data about a task – when it will be completed, who will be doing it, and how much it is going to cost. The commercial finance reporting is second to none, and the monthly management report allows us to drill down into the data and use it to make business decisions which improve the appearance and compliance of our retail stores.

It’s also reassuring to work with a dedicated account manager and a key account supervisor, as it gives us confidence that any escalations are dealt with in a timely manner, and the fully manned industry-trained helpdesk available 24/7 gives us the peace of mind that any out-of-hours emergencies will be dealt with by consummate professionals.

We’re delighted with the efficiencies that we’ve made after switching to Cloudfm, especially as they’ve been coupled with improvements in quality and service delivery, which directly contribute to a more positive retail customer experience – and that is of the utmost importance to us.”

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Innovating Through Adversity: TUI’s Transformative Talent Strategy

TUI transformed their approach to candidate assessment in the midst of pandemic uncertainty. Now it gets the right people into role quickly and efficiently, while delivering the TUI brand.

Here’s how Sova helped them do it.

An award-winning partnership

Read the TUI customer story in full 

Business Background​

TUI Group is one of the world’s leading tourism groups. Head-quartered in Germany, TUI has 21 million customers across 180+ destinations, and a 60,000 strong workforce.​

In 2020, the global pandemic brought the travel industry to its knees. TUI was no exception to this as travel restrictions and flight suspensions wreaked havoc on the organisation and brought operations almost to a halt.​

Their immediate priority was to safely return all customers home. The next priority was to reduce costs to a minimum in order to survive as a business, which included staff cuts and furloughs.​

In 2021, TUI began to look ahead to rebuilding their workforce and recovering from the impact of the pandemic. This presented a huge challenge. TUI was now working with a reduced headcount and the pre-pandemic hiring processes for volume campaigns were no longer fit for purpose, due to:​

• Heavy reliance on manual screening, and costly physical Assessment Days​
• Inconsistent process across markets for the same roles​
• No integration with an ATS​
• Multiple local suppliers​

TUI required a future-proof supplier that integrated with SuccessFactors ATS, created a superior candidate experience, increased recruiter productivity, increased conversions and reduced time to hire, while reducing costs compared to their pre-pandemic processes.

A main driver of the decision to go with Sova was the flexibility of the platform across all parts of the assessment process and the Candidate portal that hosts the entire recruitment journey in one place. 

Another key driver was the Virtual Assessment Centre functionality, together with a self-service booking tool for candidates. Alongside the use of bespoke Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs) for each role, enabling automated screening of candidates on their ability to analyse the situation, identify the most appropriate course of action, and demonstrate the competencies required for the role.

Overall, Sova provided a value-added, all-inclusive solution, that gave a premium candidate experience.

Nice that different scenarios emerge with what can happen before and on board. Gives you a real idea of how you would approach this. Great assessment!  - Candidate Feedback

Hiring in large volumes, it was vital that Sova enabled TUI to assess candidates at scale, without compromising on effectiveness or candidate experience. The project set up largely consisted of 3 stages:​

• Situational judgement test (SJT) combined with a Personality Assessment mapped to the TUI competency framework for each role​
• Language Assessment ​
• Assessment Centre or Video Interview​

TUI saw 50,000 applicants enter the first stage, from which 15,000 candidates would progress to the final Virtual Interview or Assessment Centre, of which 3,500 would be offered a role. ​

In the post-pandemic world, these volumes would have been near impossible using TUI’s legacy hiring process. Sova’s automated, virtual process enables candidates to complete the process in just one week from application, instead of the previous 8 weeks. This is critical when competing for talent in a challenging market. 

Each stage of the process is tracked and measured for effectiveness, fairness and candidate experience so that TUI can continue to optimise and improve, to find and retain the best talent. ​

The Sova platform is now an integral part of our volume hiring process and provides candidates with a far superior experience. The feedback from candidates is invaluable and we continue to work closely with the Sova team to enhance the platform and sharpen our processes for the future.​  - Helen Williams, Talent Acquisition Manager and Project Lead, TUI​

This was the first time TUI had shifted to a virtual recruitment process at scale – accelerated by the pandemic. Despite this, candidates reported an overwhelmingly positive experience of the TUI recruitment process:​

• 85% gave high NPS of 9 or 10 ‘how likely are you to recommend TUI as a future employer.​
• 95% of candidates agreed/strongly agreed that the assessment gave them a positive impression of TUI​
• 85% of candidates agreed that the assessment gave them a good insight into the role​
• 86% of those who started the online assessment completed it​
• 88% of those who started the VI or AC completed it – both statistics are best in class.​

Since these initial campaigns, TUI’s recruitment has gone from strength to strength. The 2022-23 campaigns (including Childcare, Cabin Crew, and Ski Reps) saw even more positive outcomes:​

• 94% of those who started the assessment, completed it
• 93% agreed that the assessment was engaging and gave a positive impression of TUI​
• 89% would recommend TUI as a future employer, based on the recruitment process​
• 9.2 average NPS score​

These statistics indicate not only an engaging online assessment process that is getting the right people into role swiftly and efficiently, but one that is also delivering the TUI employer brand.​

Since launch, the TUI<>Sova Assessment partnership has expanded significantly. TUI are now using the platform across Retail, Contact Centre, Pilots and continue to expand in Early Talent across the UK, Europe and the USA. Since launch over 85,000 candidates have been assessed, resulting in 10,000 hires.​

Candidate Assessment Award Gold Winner - IHR Awards 2023

This award recognises TUI's in-house recruitment team who have successfully set up a new assessment process, leading to improved hiring results. 

Candidate Assessment Award: Talint Tiara Awards 2023

This Award recognises the most innovative and effective candidate assessment solution that meets the needs of the organisation’s talent strategy and leads to improved hiring results.

TUI experienced a significant transformation in its recruitment process, swiftly adopting a digital approach due to the pandemic's impact. This change introduced a tailored, multi-dimensional candidate journey.

The Best Use of Technology Award: Tiara Talent Acquisition Awards 2023

This award recognises the most effective and impactful use of technology within talent acquisition either through implementing a unique, new tech solution or using existing tech in an innovative way.

Case Study of TUI Group

Produce a briefing document addressing the quality issues of either BA or TUI, focusing on one quality issue and its application to the gap model, as well as the need for BA/TUI to focus on their resources, competencies, and capabilities to gain a competitive advantage.

Added on   2023-01-12

About This Document

   Added on  2023-01-12

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