“The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation.”

Skift's article on the demise of Thomas Cook cites many factors that contributed to it. Other than debt and bad acquisitions, its inability to transform digitally played a crucial role. The key factors:

1. Sales treated as separate entities for offline and online with two P&Ls resulting in neither team wanting to co-operate with each other. This is a common problem in other sectors too. E.g., many retail orgs still function this way. It wastes resources and time, and doesn't add value to the customer.

2. No CRM system to track customers which is absolutely bizarre for hospitality. This plagues hotels too. Without understanding the customer, how can they hope to continually improve customer lifetime value?

3. Decades old IT systems that had not been overhauled. Again a legacy issue with so many sectors including banking and retail.

4. Inability to prepare for the rise of OTAs by not developing enough exclusive offerings and a bad user experience for online booking. Differentiation and distribution are both critical.

Transformation needs to start with the core, and that is the customer.