Six months after letting go senior executives, including group general manager Luzi Matzig who set up a rival company and took some of Diethelm's business with him, Diethelm has unveiled new senior management executives and a new product range.
Rumours had circulated that Diethelm was on a slow slide to ruin. But Diethelm executives now say that all the business they expected to lose due to personal connections has gone and the fight for the future will depend on delivering product, service and performance, while looking for opportunities to win new business from previously untapped markets.
In the product category, highlights of Diethelm's new, improved look are a new tour bus, a hotels brochure with quotations in Thai baht as against dollars, and a new department handling events management.
New sales managers have been appointed.
The popular 'Around Thailand' coach-tours have been divided into three categories: Top-end products that will use the deluxe coach-tour, mid-market tours like the current Diethelm Classic Tours and budget-type products for volume operators.
This winter, Diethelm Travel will introduce centralised 24-hour customer helplines in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
General Manager Thomas Reiter said, "We have been successful in doing business in a certain way for a long time, but this is not good enough for the future. The team you see here today will find new ways to deal with incoming business in the next ten years.''
The company's Zurich-based chief financial officer said the 26-billion baht company, whose main line of business is pharmaceuticals, would give the travel division unmitigated support in helping it ride through several years of projected low profitability and high competition.
"We are being attacked," said Mr Chris Schmid, the CEO, "Don't expect us to sit back and do nothing. All these changes in the past few months have only strengthened our resolve to fight back."