Britannia Direct: Thomson’s answer to the low-cost carriers

The client

Britannia was Thomson Travel Group's charter airline, historically tied to package holidays. When Easyjet, Go and Ryanair showed flight-only demand, Thomson needed Britannia Direct: a new company selling low fares on the web and through a call centre, using surplus charter capacity priced dynamically.

Jonathan Porter was lead designer on the web experience. We delivered as the design team at NetDecisions / Agilisys, alongside netdecisions' build of the yield management and operations platform.

The challenge

Thomson had four months to deliver a system that could:

• Sell flights via web and call centre from one inventory
• Price dynamically and change availability instantly
• Compete with the new low-cost carriers without abandoning the charter model

What we did

Lead designer on Britannia Direct's web design and development, as part of a netdecisions engagement that also delivered training, unified CRM, yield management and extensive admin tools so staff could alter every element of the offer in real time.

Our approach

Inventory first, interface second. The UX had to make bargain fares easy to find while the back end hunted excess capacity in Thomson's flight stock, priced it and pushed it live. Web and call centre had to feel like one product, not two teams reading different spreadsheets.

Outcome

netdecisions delivered ahead of schedule. The client described the result as:

Britannia Direct joined TheFirstResort.com and SkyDeals in Thomson's netdecisions portfolio, a run of travel ventures built in the same era.

Context & coverage

2000 was the year UK travel went digital and discount at the same time. Britannia Direct was Thomson's structural response: use the airline's existing seats, sell them like a low-cost carrier, and do it before the summer season passed.

• NetDecisions press release summary, July 2000: four-month deadline, yield management, ahead of schedule, client quote (ingested primary source).