Thomas Cook Accused of Putting Cost Before Customers Over Corfu Deaths
Thomas Cook has a tendency to protect costs ahead of customer experience, a review into the travel firm's health and safety practices following the deaths of two children at one of its resorts found.
Bobby and Christi Shepherd from West Yorkshire died while on holiday in Corfu with their parents in
October 2006.
The youngsters, aged six and seven, were overcome by carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty boiler and died at the Louis Corcyra Beach Hotel on the Greek holiday island.
An inquest into their deaths earlier this year found the tour operator had “breached their duty of care”, and that they had been unlawfully killed.
A report into Thomas Cook's customer, health, safety, welfare and crisis management concluded that parts of the business were putting financial priorities ahead of customers' needs.
The report, carried out by former Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King, found that processes for crises or incidents which have a major impact on customers “is set up for success and appears to work well”.
But it said: “Individual profit centres such as the 'airline' and 'destination management' (divisions) have a tendency to protect cost rather than maximise the customer experience.
“Their approach is closer to 'What's the minimum we can do to solve the problem?' rather than 'What should we do to make this as good as we can?'. This is a cultural as much as a financial challenge.''
And while Thomas Cook has a “risk dashboard” process to identify key risks, “there is an over-emphasis on financial and reputational risk and less emphasis on customer consequences and outcomes than is appropriate”, the report found.