TUI Travel plc, the London based tour operating group that owns Thomson Cruises in the UK with five ships and is a major retailer of cruises of other lines, says its direct distribution and online businesses have shown continued strong growth in the first half of its financial year.

“Our direct distribution mix improved by three percentage points in the first half to 68% of Mainstream sales, with improvements in all key source markets. The improvement in direct distribution was driven by the online channel which also increased by four percentage points to 38% of Mainstream sales,” the company said in a statement. “Our customers are increasingly seeing the benefits of our digital transformation strategy, which in turn is driving conversion improvements from our new web platforms.”

“Our digital assistant app is a key driver in maintaining the ongoing customer relationship and will be used to link our people more effectively with our customers any time, anywhere, any way, with continuous additions to functionality. To date, we have rolled out the app to five source markets, just twelve months after the initial UK launch.”

“The apps have received over 490,000 downloads to date with good levels of usage and engagement. We have a clear roadmap in place to make the transition ‘from assistant to concierge’ over the next 18 months, with additional features that will lead to an increased number of downloads.”

“As an online-driven business, we have a focus on the online customer experience. We are moving to one core online platform across Mainstream. This has already been implemented in the UK and Nordics source markets, and is being rolled out to others in 2014. We continue to see significant benefits in conversion rates as a result of the implementation of the new platform. The optimisation of websites in our core source markets for mobile and tablet use is also driving improved conversion - in the UK, smartphone and tablet bookings improved by 81% in the first half of the year,” TUI Travel said.