Thomson to close call centres
Thompson travel have announced they are closing their Glasgow based call centre after 7 years, shedding 450 jobs in the process.
When the call centre opened in 2000, it was viewed as a major investment allowing people to book holidays directly via the telephone instead of using a high street travel agents. This year though, less than 5% of people who booked a holiday package with Thompson used the call centre.
The rapid growth of the internet to book holidays has been cited as the reason for the closure of the call centre. According to the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta), nearly a quarter of package holidays were booked via the internet in 2004, compared with 5% using call centres.
The high street travel agents will probably remain for the foreseeable future though. It seems that the growth in online bookings has mostly been fuelled by people switching from using call centres to the internet. The habits of the high street shoppers are slower to change though!