United kingdom Daily news: Top holiday companies: Tour operators hit back at 'flawed' customer service survey by Which?

Selasa, 29 Mei 2012

Top holiday companies: Tour operators hit back at 'flawed' customer service survey by Which?

Top holiday companies: Tour operators hit back at 'flawed' customer service survey by Which?

By Travelmail

PUBLISHED: 05:44 EST, 29 May 2012 | UPDATED: 05:44 EST, 29 May 2012

Tour operators criticised in a recent Which? survey into customer survey have hit back at the organisation, saying its poll was flawed.

Thomas Cook and Newmarket Holidays were ranked bottom of a survey entitled 'The holiday firms you can rely on', but they argue that the sample size of respondents used by Which? was far too small.

But the consumer rights organisation has maintained that it only needs 30 responses from members of the public to be able to rank holiday companies on their customer service.

Controversy: Some holiday companies were rated based on responses from less than 50 people in the Which? survey into customer service

Which? claims that 3,576 people responded to the questions in its survey, but when broken down, many of the companies were only 'rated' for customer service by less than 50 customers.

Of the 26 tour operators that were featured in the poll, only five were rated by more than 100 people.

Nearly 500 people responded to questions about Thomson, while 266 answered question on Thomas Cook.

The survey also compared 26 travel companies based on customer satisfaction with the first ten - headed by Trailfinders - achieving scores of at least 85 per cent.

But at the other end of the table, Shearings only received a 62 per cent customer satisfaction rating, while Thomas Cook received 60 per cent and Newmarket Holidays 57 per cent.

Simon Hibbs, managing director of The Newmarket Group, told website TravelMole: 'We take all consumer feedback seriously, but this particular survey is somewhat flawed since our rating was based upon a sample size of just 42 people (despite the fact that we took 227,000 customers on holiday last year).

Our company has been trading successfully for nearly 30 years, has built a hard-earned reputation for value-for-money, has a 'repeat-factor' of over 40 per cent, and last year was voted 'Best Coach Operator' by the public at the British Travel Awards.'

Thomas Cook also questioned the value of the survey, saying it wasn't comparing like-for-like products, which is of little help to consumers.

A Which? spokesperson said its research was 'statistically sound' and confirmed that it would use information even if just 30 people have responded to rate a company.