Speaking on stage on the second day of the conference in Tel Aviv, Chris Mottershead said working for Cook was “like the missing piece in my career”.

“I thought Thomas Cook hadn’t quite fulfilled its potential. It was always the best-known brand but it was never the market leader,” he added.

He admitted Cook had faced challenges and allowed rival businesses to steal a march, particularly with regards to online share.

“We are below Tui - about 35-40% of our bookings come from online,” he conceded. Yesterday Tui UK managing director Nick Longman revealed that 60% of the group’s business comes from online.

However Mottershead added: “You’ve got to look at cost acquisition and where the customer wants to purchase their holiday. We don’t have shops for the sake of having shops, we have them because that’s where the customer wants to purchase [their holidays].

“I see an opportunity for growth with regards to online… there is potential for growth in packages [as well]. We might be taking share from somewhere else. We’ve been guilty in the past of allowing our competitors to take that from us and now we’ve got the strength to take that back.”

Mottershead conceded it was a “challenge” to recover the ground that had been lost to Tui, which the latest Atol figures showing it carried 4.78 million passengers in the last year, compared with Cook’s three million. “It’s a challenge but it’s not impossible,” he said. “And we are in the right direction. We need to compete and be a stronger competitor. We have tended to roll over sometimes – that’s not going to happen from now on.”

He also acknowledged that Cook was still not where it needed to be yet financially. “We’re not quite up to where we were before the financial downturn, but we’re on our way to where we were. In a relatively few years, I think we’ll be back to the levels of 2008,” he insisted.

“Last year was a very difficult year for Thomas Cook and it was clear to me that we had to change and improve our quality and customer service.”

In a veiled dig at Cook’s rivals, Mottershead added: “We’re already seeing some improvement – we’re getting some fantastic recognition from customers. We’ve taken out hundreds of our poor performing hotels and some of them are now appearing with our competition…”