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The Battle of Brand is about to begin and, by this time next year, we will see who has won the war; the established players - Thomson, Airtours, First Choice and Thomas Cook, defending the territory of their market share, or the new online players - uTravel.co.uk, bargainholidays.com, Expedia Inc. and any other number of new start-up businesses which you may not have heard of yet.

At stake is the most lucrative of all online sectors, an online travel market set to grow exponentially in the coming few years. According to some estimates, the European travel market is worth £540 billion, one thousandth of which was booked online last year. Forrester Research expects this online figure to grow six-fold over the next two years. By the following year, 2003, First Choice estimates that in the UK 30% of flight-only will be booked online, 20% of lates and 15% of brochured holidays.

Over the last month or so, all the majors have announced their e-commerce plans backed by multi-million pound budgets that are going to pay for their journeys into the new online world. First Choice has announced its two-year £10 million strategy covering digital television, the Web and in-store technology. Airtours is opening its eMedia studio in Manchester which will have a staff of 25. Thomson unveiled its £100 million two-year e-commerce strategy.

Should the new online brands be quaking in their boots? The stock markets did not think so when Thomson announced its commitment to e-commerce (at the same time as it announced its annual results). Its shares just trickled downwards. 

How are the existing players going to compete? The broad strategies are to e-enable existing brands, launch new online businesses and to capitalise on the control of product. Tim Byrne, Airtours' Finance Director, has been quoted in the press referring to the new dotcoms, as saying, "…. we own the content and we are not going to let third party distribution take control of it." This is a good idea but it relies on one essential assumption: that you can have enough of an online market presence to be able to sell all your product by yourself.

Now if I were setting an e-commerce strategy for any of the big four and this was truly my objective, I would do two things. Firstly, I would make sure all my existing brands have an online sales capability. Secondly, I would also launch a super-brand, one single distribution entity at which I could throw huge chunks of marketing budget to create an online travel business which would achieve high consumer recognition. I would need to do this because if I spread my marketing spend across too many brand entities, none would achieve recognition and they would all remain lacklustre businesses. Now, you do not need to be a Harvard Business School graduate to figure this one out, so we must assume that this is what is about to happen and, of course, this is supported by Thomson launching thefirstresort.com which may or may not be their super-brand. (By the way, did anyone consider that The First Resort and First Choice might become confused with each other in the consumer's mind?)

The question is, therefore, if indeed one or more of the big four launch an online super-brand, have they got the financial muscle to promote it? Can their brand establishment spend rank alongside that of the start-ups? Can they, for example, compete with Teletext's budget of £3 million devoted to the launch of their Web site that will not only sell holidays but will have content that provides a far more compelling reason to visit the site. (Teletext claims to have catalysed 3.5 million bookings in the past year. They are not going to surrender that capability just because consumers are moving to the new channels of the Web and digital TV.)

Expedia Inc. had a recent flotation. How many tens of millions do they have in the bank to compete for brand recognition? Could eDreams, for example, go to the market and raise brand recognition spend that would give First Choice nightmares as they realise they simply do not have the funds to compete?

eDreams, Teletext, uTravel.co.uk all have an important additional advantage over the big four. They are unencumbered by legacy distribution channels, or shops as we used to call them. Charles Gurassa of Thomson has announced that some Lunn Poly shops are likely to close. There will surely be a cost associated with this. Will this come out of the £100 million set aside for e-commerce? If Airtours is driving business into Going Places via its presence on Open, the interactive channel broadcast on Sky, how much of this is incremental business? Maybe all they are doing is switching Going Places brand lovers from the shops to the box? Will Thomas Cook Online be seen as an unbiased travel vendor or do consumers make the connection between TC and JMC? Consumers love to shop in big, unbiased marketplaces and that is exactly what Teletext and bargainholidays.com offer. They also have proven that the formula is successful. Will TravelChoice.com, for example, be perceived as truly offering more than First Choice holidays?

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