Six successful months of Thomsonfly.com from Bournemouth airport
23.09.2005 Thomsonfly.com is today celebrating six successful months of low fare flights from Bournemouth Airport.
As it celebrates six months of flying Thomsonfly has provided an insight into its customer booking trends and onboard passenger feedback. Since commencing passenger flights on March 22 this year, Thomsonfly.com has flown over 240,000 passengers and taken 340,000 bookings in total for 2005.
Maria Heckel, Marketing Director, of Thomsonfly.com commented: “Since we started flying from Bournemouth in March we have had great feedback from our customers. The bookings speak for themselves showing the success of Thomsonfly.com and the demand for the service we’re providing. This information enables us to tailor the service and operation in to the future.”
Customers are travelling with Thomsonfly for a variety of reasons. Thomsonfly’s in-flight customer survey shows that the majority of passengers are jetting away for a leisure break, 15% are travelling to visit friends and relatives and the remainder are on business. 18% of customers who had flown with Thomsonfly.com previously were visiting their own apartment reflecting the trend towards people owning a second home overseas. The most popular destinations from Bournemouth Airport are Costa Del Sol (Malaga) and Majorca (Palma), which are traditional Spanish holiday destinations for British people. Amsterdam is also very popular for people travelling on business or heading off for a short break.
Booking data shows that Thomsonfly.com has already established a loyal passenger base. A quarter of passengers have flown with the low fares airline previously with over 35% of passengers having flown with the airline four times. Business travellers were most likely to be repeat bookers – almost half have flown with the airline before. Pre-bookable seats, allocated seating and the ability to add elements to flights including accommodation, transfers and car hire are key factors to customers when choosing their airline and flights.
76% of the passengers rated their flight experience as excellent, the cabin crew friendliness, professionalism and customer care score very highly, proving that the crew are providing a good quality of service. The airport also rated highly with 70% of customers rating the airport as good or excellent. Results also show that 74% of passengers regard Thomsonfly as good value for money. The best fare that is currently available is £9.99 on the Bournemouth to Amsterdam route for departures at the end of September – excluding taxes and charges.
Thomsonfly is also flying many international visitors into the region with the majority of inbound customers coming from Amsterdam and Paris travelling on business and to language schools. There are also a high number of ex-UK residents flying in from their homes in Spanish destinations such as Palma, Malaga and Valencia.
Thomsonfly currently offers flights to seven European destinations - Malaga, Valencia, Palma, Paris, Amsterdam, Faro, and Pisa with prices starting from as little as £17.99 one way, including taxes and charges. The winter schedule has recently been released with the addition of four new routes – Lyon, Salzburg, Tenerife and Alicante – early bookings figures show that these new destinations are popular with customers.
The success has contributed to Thomsonfly’s decision to take low fare, high frequency flying nationwide. As announced last week Thomsonfly.com now offers low fare flights from 11 UK airports.
Flights can be booked online.
