Thomas Cook Group - Re: TCG Stream Log - Despite significant market disruption, trading...

Despite significant market disruption, trading has been satisfactory for the Winter season, which is 93% sold and in line with the booking pattern at the same time last year. Compared to last year, Winter bookings have been adversely impacted by continued social unrest in Egypt. However, this was successfully mitigated through the more integrated management processes and improved customer service that we introduced last year. Excluding Egypt, we have achieved higher average selling prices and bookings and gross margin has been positively impacted by improved yield management and cost efficiencies. We continue to expand the range of winter sun destinations on offer consistent with our strategy of broadening our product range. In the UK, bookings are 2% higher than last year (excluding Egypt). Pricing however, was impacted by a higher proportion of one-week duration holidays and competitive pricing in certain destinations as market capacity was redirected from Egypt. As a result, average selling prices were 3% lower than last year; however, this short term impact of lower average selling prices has been mitigated by the significant cost out initiatives as part of the ongoing transformation of the business, which remains on track.