FRANKFURT, GERMANY--(Marketwired - Oct 1, 2013) - Building on Thomas Cook's already strong brand heritage, and as part of its Transformation, the Thomas Cook Group plc, @ThomasCookGrp has today announced its plans to unify its brands and market activity under one common symbol, the 'Sunny Heart.' The 'Sunny Heart' is being rolled out from today, and will replace the current 'Globe' in the Group's websites, international stores, the airline fleet, and throughout its headquarters and overseas offices.

The essence of the new brand captures who Thomas Cook is, and what it promises -- a high tech, high touch experience across all customer touch points with an omni-channel approach.

The Group has many leading brands including Neckermann in Europe, Ving in Sweden, Condor in Germany and Airtours in the UK that will all carry the 'Sunny Heart.' The intention isn't to rebrand all with the Sunny Heart, but they form part of the Group architecture and will, in most cases, carry the Heart as some part of their logo.

"It's a major milestone in our high tech, high touch transformation," said Harriet Green, Group CEO of Thomas Cook Group plc. "This isn't just a rollout of a new logo, it's about a promise. What we're announcing today is a renewed promise to our customers, our people and suppliers. A promise that we're putting them at the heart of our transformation, it's the essence of who we are. The unification of our brands under the Sunny Heart is three fold; it will make it easier for our customers to understand the full strength and end-to-end value of the entire Thomas Cook Group coupled with our full innovative offering of our services and products; it will show more clearly what differentiates us and how we provide a total experience along every touch point -- from research, to booking, to anticipation, to the holiday itself; and importantly, it will clarify our customer promise -- a complete range of inspirational experiences for our customers."

"The Heart will appear on the web, in brochures, in our aircraft, in our concept hotels, our other hotels and in our stores: in short, everywhere that our customers connect with us," continues Harriet Green, Group CEO of Thomas Cook Group. "Our new brand essence will show our customers the breadth and depth of the Thomas Cook Group. It will inspire and assure our customers, showing that everything through our brands is connected at every level ensuring a unification of care for our customers, through every step of their journey with Thomas Cook."

"We are building a simplified and strengthened portfolio that incorporates the 'Sunny Heart' essence into our brands, this is more than a design refresh, it is leveraging the combined strength of our Group to maximise our presence in the mind of customers," said Michael Healy, CFO of Thomas Cook Group, plc. "This brand unification is part of our new profitable growth strategy announced in March this year. Having already piloted this approach in our North European businesses, we know first-hand that it increases both early bookings and online bookings with the added benefit of heightened brand awareness. The brand unification has been developed internally, and we are rolling it out appropriately for this stage of our transformation in a way that complements the normal, planned refresh of materials including our planned brochure runs, maintenance and store refreshes."