Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook (
22 November 1808 –
18 July 1892) of
Melbourne, Derbyshire, founded the travel agency that bears his name. He was brought up as a strict Baptist and joined his local
Temperance Society. He worked as a cabinet maker and part-time publisher of Baptist and Temperance pamphlets, becoming a Baptist minister in 1828. John Mason Cook, his only son, was born in 1834.
His idea to offer excursions came to him while waiting for the stagecoach on the London Road at
Kibworth. With the opening of the extended Midland Counties Railway, he arranged to take a group of 570
temperance campaigners from
Leicester to a rally in
Loughborough, eleven miles away. On
5 July 1841, Thomas Cook arranged for the rail company to charge one
shilling per person that included rail tickets and food for this train journey. Cook was paid a share of the fares actually charged to the passengers, as the railway tickets, being legal contracts between company and passenger, could not have been issued at his own price. During the following three summers he planned and conducted outings for temperance societies and Sunday-school children. In
1844 the Midland Counties Railway Company agreed to make a permanent arrangement with him provided he found the passengers. This success lead him to start his own business running rail excursions for pleasure, taking a percentage of the railway tickets.
On
4 August 1845 he arranged accommodation for a party to travel from Leicester to Liverpool. In
1846, he took 350 people from
Leicester on a tour of Scotland, however his lack of commercial ability lead him to
bankruptcy. He persisted and had success when he claimed that he arranged for over 165,000 people to attend the
Great Exhibition. Four years later, he planned his first excursion abroad, when he took a group from Leicester to
Calais to coincide with the
Paris Exhibition. The following year he started his 'grand circular tours' of Europe. During the
1860s he took parties to Switzerland, Italy, Egypt and USA. Cook established 'inclusive independent travel', whereby the traveller went independently but his agency charged for travel, food and accommodation for a fixed period over any chosen route. Such was his success that the Scottish Railway companies withdrew their support between 1862 and 1863 to try the excursion business for themselves.
With his only son, John Mason Cook, he formed a partnership and renamed the travel agency as
Thomas Cook and Son. They acquired business premises on
Fleet Street, London. By this time, Cook had stopped personal tours and became an agent for foreign or domestic travel. Thomas saw his venture as both religious and social service; his son provided the commercial expertise that allowed the company to expand. Their business model was refined by the introduction of the 'hotel coupon' in
1866. Detachable coupons in a counterfoil book were issued to the traveller. These were valid for either a restaurant meal or an overnight hotel stay provided they were on Cook's list. A round the world tour started in
1872, which for 200
guineas, included a steamship across the Atlantic, a stage coach across America, a paddle steamer to
Japan, and an overland journey across China and India.
Conflicts of interest between father and son were resolved when the son persuaded his father, Thomas Cook, to retire in
1879. He moved back to Leicestershire and lived quietly until his death. The firm's growth was consolidated by John Mason Cook and his two sons, especially by its involvement with military transport and postal services for
Britain and
Egypt during the
1880s. By 1888, the company had established offices around the world, including three in Australia and one in Auckland, New Zealand. John Mason Cook promoted, and even led, excursions to, for example, the Middle East. However, while arranging for the German
Emperor Wilhelm II to visit Palestine in 1898, he contracted
dysentery and died the following year. His sons, Frank and
Ernest, were not nearly as successful running the business. Despite opening a new headquarters in
Berkeley Square, London in 1926, ownership of
Thomas Cook and Son only remained with the family until 1928, when it was sold to the
Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. After the outbreak of
World War II, the Paris headquarters of the Wagons-Lits company was seized by the occupying forces, and in turn the British assets were requisitioned by the Government. In 1941, the centenary of the company, Thomas Cook & Son Ltd. was sold to the four major railway companies.
The company was
nationalised in
1948 as part of the British Transport Commission. In the early
1950s, the company began promoting 'foreign holidays' (particularly
Italy,
Spain and
Switzerland) by showing information films at town halls throughout
Britain. However they made a costly decision by not going into the new form of cheap holidays which combined the transport and accommodation arrangements into a single
'package'. The company went further into decline and were only rescued by a consortium of
Trust House Forté,
Midland Bank and the
Automobile Association who bought the company from the
British Government on
26 May 1972 [
1].Subsequently,
Midland Bank acquired sole control during 1977.
After
restructuring the company and entering into the
travellers' cheque business the company prospered again. In June 1992, the company was sold to the German bank,
Westdeutsche Landesbank, and the charter airline,
LTU Group for £200 million. During 1996, after ironically being bought by
American Express, the company bought the short-haul operator, Sunworld, and the European city-breaks tour group, Time Off. Within three years, the company had combined Sunworld, Sunset, Inspirations,
Flying Colours and
Caledonian Airways into the
JMC brand.
In 1999 the Carlson Leisure Group merged with Thomas Cook. In mid-2000 Preussag acquired Thomas Cook's rival Thomson Travel and was forced to sell its 50% stake in Thomas Cook by regulatory authorities. In 2002 Thomas Cook was acquired by the German company C&N Touristic AG, which later changed its name to
Thomas Cook AG. The group is jointly owned by
Lufthansa and
Karstadt.
In the
United Kingdom, Thomas Cook conforms to the model of a 'vertically integrated travel company' operating an airline, a retail arm and also a tour operator. This tour operator division has previously been known as Thomas Cook Tour Operations but in early 2006 was restructured as the 'Holidays Division', incorporating the previously separate Thomas Cook Signature brand alongside the Thomas Cook, JMC and Sunset brands. The 'Specialist Products' division includes Uptrips (including the Club 18-30 brand), Style, Neilson Active Holidays and Sunworld Ireland.
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Thomas Cook Airlines*
Thomas Cook Airlines (Belgium)*
Thomas Cook Website*
Thomas Cook Biography
