Tour operator de force
A timely transfer
Having revamped Airtours on both sides of the Atlantic, Mottershead began to grow disillusioned with the travel giant ‘at group level’, but he didn’t have to wait long for another major challenge to come his way. Airtours’ bitter rival TUI UK approached Mottershead to try and restore its sheen.
With the disastrous events of 9/11 casting unparalleled shadows over the sector, Mottershead found the offer to reinvigorate TUI too tempting to resist, becoming managing director of TUI UK just two months after the Twin Towers tragedy. His responsibilities stretched to Thomson Holidays, Lunn Poly and Travelhouse, as well as TUI’s other UK travel businesses.
‘What really attracted me was the idea that I could combine the quality and service of TUI with the commercial edge that Airtours had. If I could achieve that then I thought we would really have one heck of a business, even after 9/11.
‘Airtours and TUI had competed aggressively for years, and when I came in, I was as welcome as the proverbial… [he pauses to search for non-expletives]… well, anyway, success changes perceptions,’ he wryly concludes. And success he truly delivered, firstly by providing a steady hand at the wheel though one of the darkest periods in the companies history and thereafter scoring record profits by delivering the innovation that was missing.
For instance, he transformed the group’s new media functions, bringing in world-class internet booking capabilities that subsequently helped drive online sales from £60 million to £300 million in just 18 months. A original television travel channel was also introduced. In addition, Mottershead brought a raft of new destinations on stream, culminating in Thomson Holidays again becoming the biggest holiday player in Britain. ‘Despite 9/11, SARS and the war in Iraq, we grew profits every year and restored TUI to the number one spot in the UK by late 2003.’
Thomson continues to dominate the market thanks to the measures put in place by Mottershead. ‘I did lots of travelling and looked for opportunities outside the core Spanish market – like Croatia, Egypt, and Turkey. When I joined, the internet was less than two per cent of the business, but when I left it was more than 20 per cent. I believe it’s now more than 50 per cent.’
Fruity new possibilities
With the onset of online bookings, Mottershead could see that the next necessary phase in TUI’s development was a lengthy and brutal cost-cutting exercise. Having already faced down such hurdles elsewhere, he decided to leave TUI in September 2004 and put into play a pioneering new idea that had struck him during his time in North America.
‘I thought, “Why not create something very new in the travel industry – a company with all the successful components commentators clamour for and none of the legacy elements?” I took a look around and saw that there was no middle ground in the industry. All the main players were either very big or very small, and I felt there was potential for a business in the middle ground.’
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Vital statistics
Name: Chris Mottershead
Age: 47
Status: Married with four children. ‘Family plays a very important part in my life’
Hobbies: Staunch Manchester United fan, occasional golfer and loves to travel. ‘When you run the UK’s biggest holiday company, people welcome you with open arms everywhere you go!’
Rules of Thumb: ‘I’m not a control freak, but I have to know exactly what is going on in each part of any business I run and I set up my board accordingly. I bring in people that are entrepreneurial, able to drive sales, because I can’t do it all myself. When I left corporate life I vowed to work with people that are confident but not arrogant, commercial but not nasty.’
Business hero: Biggest influence on his career is David Crossland, who successfully built up the Airtours /MyTravel giant, which later nearly collapsed. ‘The tragedy of MyTravel could have been avoided,’ he says.