Sunweb Group wants to become the digital holiday expert and combine convenience with service. That’s according to Tim Van den Bergh, the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at Sunweb Group since March this year. Van den Bergh has been with the travel company since 2015, where he until recently held the position of Director Sun & Beach Holidays & Specialties. He now has commercial responsibility for all markets and the entire portfolio of sun and ski holidays. Time to get acquainted. Tim Van den Bergh resides in the Sunweb office on the outskirts of Rotterdam and Capelle aan den IJssel. At the beginning of the conversation, he succinctly summarizes Sunweb Group’s plans for the future. ‘We have a strong strategy in place, and in short, it is: going forward.’ What exactly are these growth plans?
‘We want to become the digital holiday expert. It’s about combining the best of both worlds. On the one hand, the slightly more traditional tour operator world, such as the TUIs and the Corendons of this world, which have a bit of vertical integration and have their own people on site. On the other hand, there is the world of online travel agents, so the Expedias and the Booking.com’s, who are extremely good at offering digital convenience. We want to combine both, so that you can also book or change a more complex holiday in two clicks. So the best of the OTA world when it comes to the digital experience and on the other hand the tour operator world, where the aspect of hospitality is especially important.’ Is that Sunweb’s strength? ‘We have 400 to 500 people at the destinations and a large number of digital guides who work from our hubs, who our guests can fall back on. And we don’t have a single hotel in our offer that we haven’t visited ourselves. We could also open a sofa bed and offer everything to all possible destinations, but that is not our goal. We want to select what we offer and develop a partner ecosystem, with airlines, hotels and other partners. We want to do more volume with fewer partners. You don’t see us opening ten new destinations in the coming years. We only open a destination when we see a high demand in the market for a destination that we do not yet have, based on data. A destination where we can make business with a number of existing partners, such as Transavia, Brussels Airlines or SAS from different countries.’ So a big focus on a select number of destinations? ‘We call them focus destinations, a small number of destinations that we put very well on the map. When the customer goes to Crete with us, they need to feel like they are in a Sunweb destination, through the welcome, through the hotel partners who know the Sunweb customer and who know what they expect. But if we spread people over 30 destinations, you have that Sunweb feeling much less. And that brings me back to the best of both worlds. The digital, with great ease of booking, and as a tour operator with real tour operator knowledge of our important destinations. We make sure that our hotel partners know who we are.” Everyone competes on price. How do you get hotel partners to enjoy working with you? ‘Booking.com and Expedia are of course nice big parties, but a hotelier is never sure whether such a booking will go ahead because of their flexible cancellation policy. With us, the number of cancellations is less than 5 percent. With us, people only cancel if they have a good reason, such as in case of illness. Many customers at Booking.com sometimes book three or four hotels and decide where to go at the last minute. Then they cancel the rest. This may offer convenience for the customer, but it creates uncertainty for the hotelier. Someone who books through us will also show up. So a hotelier would rather do business with us than with an OTA. That is the model we want to use. That is also our unique added value for customers. By bringing more customers to fewer partners, we can also negotiate better prices and our customers receive better service. And that keeps people coming back.’ Does this mean you don’t have to compete with ten other providers in the same hotel? ‘That’s something we try to aspire to in an ideal world, but in most cases we won’t succeed. If we bring sufficient volume to certain partners, you can strengthen your position. Sometimes this leads to exclusivity. In our winter sports offer, we sometimes rent accommodations for three, six or nine years, in its entirety. If the product is good, our customers want to go there, the service is good and the price is right, then you can take that extra step towards exclusivity. That’s not to say we don’t have an overlapping offer. Take, for example, the Mitsis Hotels, a well-known chain in Greece. If you offer Kos and you don’t have Mitsis, you have an offer that is less relevant, especially for customers from the Netherlands and Belgium. We have a high share of repeaters of more than 30 percent, because we take care of everything, because we understand customers or because people have a brand preference.’ Is it possible to put a small number of destinations on the map very well? ‘You do that with partners. When a hotel has 500 rooms, of which 100 to 150 are always filled by Sunweb, at a correct price, then as a hotel you will also ensure that those customers are satisfied. That’s the trade-off. The whole ecosystem matters. But if you spread those 100 rooms over ten partners, you are less important. Our own service is also that we are there for the customer 24/7. If things go wrong, we’ll fix it, no matter what it takes. And that’s something that people tell us.’ And more flexibility at an additional cost per night? ‘We are now testing; What do customers want, how much flexibility do they want? But if you want 100 percent flexibility for all trips, you can never continue to offer the service you offer now. So you have to find a balance somewhere. This is also part of the entire partner ecosystem, where partners go the extra mile for our customers than for other customers. And you have to deal with commercial reality. If we tell Transavia tomorrow that we want to be able to cancel up to 24 hours before departure, that will be quite a tough discussion.’
What can you improve on a simple package holiday? This can be done mainly at a detailed level, often with the help of technology. Take people who have booked a transfer to the airport from their hotel and are already sitting outside an hour before the transfer bus is expected. Via a GPS tracker in the app, you can ensure that they can follow the bus, just like with Uber. These are small additions to remove stress points.’ Read the complete interview with Tim Van den Bergh in the recently published TravMagazine #19. ‘Mattijs taught me how to manage teams’
