CR5 Issue 170 July 2019

The History of the
Package Holiday
Today, we take the ease of
global travel for granted but
it was the birth and rise of the
package holiday that paved
the way for world citizenship
and changed the concept of
the travel we now take for
granted.
During the first half of the
19th century only the wealthy
could afford to travel, and
beach holidays were unheard
of. People would usually go
abroad for their health or to
learn about foreign culture.
Travel wasn’t easy, but with
the coming of the railway it
became affordable.
In 1841, a man named Thomas
Cook organised a train
excursion from Leicester to
Loughborough and in 1855
he began to offer rail tours of
the continent. He eventually
launched his first round-theworld
tour in 1872, covering
the USA, Japan, China,
Singapore and India. It was
a 25,000-mile journey that
cost £210 and the start of a
company that would become
a major player in the package
holiday industry.
Commercial travel largely
stopped during the First World
War but, with the advent of
passenger planes, Thomas
Cook launched holidays by
air in the 1930s although they
were very expensive and out
of the reach of most people.
Following the Second
World War, a demand for
travelling abroad increased.
Ex-serviceman wanted to
re-visit places they had been
stationed at and the general
public wished to escape
the aftermath of war and
its ongoing rationing. Such
was the demand that, in a
bid to make holidays more
affordable, Thomas Cook was
nationalised as part of British
Rail in 1948.
The first Thomas Cook
holiday was in 1841
A year or so later, a Russian
immigrant named Vladimir
Raitz set up a travel company
called Horizon Holidays that
chartered weekly flights to a
beach resort in Corsica. As a
result, many consider him to
be the inventor of the modern
package holiday.
Possibly as a result of Horizon,
in 1954 amendments were
made to the Convention on
International Civil Aviation
that allowed for an increase
in charter planes. However,
there were still restrictions
on pricing, making it hard for
companies to be either cheap
or competitive. There was
also a shortage of hotels.
That all changed in 1957 when
British European Airways
(BEA) launched a route to
Valencia in Spain, coining
the marketing phrase ‘Costa
Blanca’. With the creation
of beach resorts came a
surge in hotel construction,
particularly in Italy and
Spain where small fishing
villages were turned into
large resorts dominated
by hotels and bars. At the
same time, larger and faster
aircraft that cut flight times
were becoming available and
there were fewer restrictions
on taking foreign currency
abroad.
Travel was easier, opening
the door to a host of tour
operators. Big corporations
began to see the financial
benefits of diversifying into
the travel industry.
Thomson Organisation was
a Canadian media-based
corporation that in 1965
bought out several of the
UK’s tour operators and
airlines, including Universal
Sky Tours’ charter airline,
Britannia. Thomson – now
branded as TUI – remains a
market leader today.
The 1970s and 1980s were
boom decades for the
package holiday. In 1970, the
Boeing 737 was launched.
The very latest in air travel,
the plane could carry more
than 400 passengers and
revolutionised commercial
flight.
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