Thomas Cook

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 414.

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A great amount of time, effort, and money go into creating a tour. Planning, packing, pricing and marketing the final product takes skill, knowledge, experience, and foresight. Tour operators can be wholesalers and retailers. Thomas Cook, Inc. is a good example of dual organisation. The travel agency business originated on a group tour basis rather than a retail basis.

Thomas Cook, founder of the world's first travel agency and entrepreneur extraordinaire, was born in England in 1808. Cook quit school at the age of ten and worked at a series of jobs, including fruit selling, and bookselling. In 1828, at the age of 20, he became a Baptist missionary and an ardent supporter of the temperance movement. It was his interest in the cause of temperance that began his career in travel.

One day, in the early summer of 1841, Cook was on his way to a temperance meeting in Leicester. At the time he was working for a Baptist publisher in Loughborough, about ten miles away. An idea occured to him: Why not arrange for members of church a special train between Longhborough and Leicester for those who planned to attend the upcoming quartely temperance meeting in Leicester? Cook approached the Midland Counties Railway company with his idea. The company agreed, and Cook advertised the arrangement. On July 5, the historic excursion took place - historic because it was the first publicity advertised excursion train to run in England.

Conditions were a bit rough. The 570 travelers were canined into nine “tubs” - seatless third-class carriages open to the elements. Already, however, Cook's planning skills were evident. He had negotiated a specially reduced fare of one shilling per person for the trip. He also arranged for a picnic lunch to be served before the afternoon procession, and at the end of the line he set out tea for 1,000 people. Despite the primitive conditions of the ride, the trip was a reasonable success. By 1844, the railway had agreed to run the excursion regularly if Cook would guarantee the passengers. And he did, having by now left the ministry to start his own travel agency.

In the next several years, he organised other temperance-related tours. They were especially popular with people of limited income, who had never before had the opportunity to travel. As his agency grew, it began to serve all kinds of travellers, no longer limiting itself to the cause of temperance.

Not until 1855 did Cook's excursions venture outside the British Isles. The occasion was the Paris Exposition of 1855, a kind of world's fair. Cook conducted excursions from Leicester to the French port of Calais. Foreseeing the business possibilities in European travel, the year he organised “A Great Circular Tour of the Continent.” Cook led the tour himself but, because he knew no foreign languages, also employed an interpreter. The tour left from Harwich, England, and moved through Belgium, Germany, and France, finally ending back at the English port of Southampton. So many travelers signed up for the tour that a repeat tour had to be scheduled six weeks later to take care of the overflow.

It took a few years for Cook's agency to institute regular service to Europe. He led another personally conducted tour to Switzerland in July 1864, the same year his son, John Mason Cook, joined him in his firm (which became Thomas Cook & Son). John Mason Cook specialized in promoting the company American tours. He did much to make Thomas Cook and & Son a worldwide travel agency.

Extremely energetic and a top organizer Thomas Cook used his group purchasing power to gain concessions from railroad companies and hotels. His agency was soon so dominant that he was able to impose on many hotels his system of accommodation cards. These were somewhat like coupons. They entitled Cook's clients to reduced rates on rooms in hotels throughout the world. Cook was not, however, without his critics. One writer compared his group tours to cattle drives. Yet business thrived. Thomas Cook died in 1892, and his business passed to his son. Today there are Thomas Cook & Son branches all over the world.

Cook's enterprising spirit changed the face of travel. He was responsible for the coining of a new phrase, the “Cook's tour,” which means a whirlwind tour that lightly touches down in many places. In a larger sense, Cook was important because of the pioneering role he played in the area of organized mass travel. Thanks to Thomas Cook, the age of the grand tour gave way to the age of tourism. The age of package tour and mass business was born.

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