Travel

Package is 175

The British Thomas Cook organized on the 5. July 1841 on his first group outing with the railway workers in England. Tea, Ham sandwich and a brass band included. It was the birth of the package holiday tourism.

Thomas Cook is regarded as a pioneer of modern tourism. In the English class, society, Cook, at the beginning, at the very bottom: in 1808, he was born as the son of a simple worker and an illiterate in the small Village of Melbourne in Derbyshire, England.

Thomas Cook In 1864

Already at the age of ten he had to leave school to earn money for the family to earn extra money. Later, he was one of the most successful travel providers in England and organized beginning in 1872, a year, a 222-day-the-world trip, completed at 40,000 km.

It all began 175 years ago, on 5. July, 1841, as a Cook for almost 500 people on a journey from Leicester to eleven miles away and Loughborough had planned. As a Baptist missionary and a strict teetotaller, it was Cook at the beginning, therefore, to provide the most Vulnerable through trips an Alternative to the consumption of alcohol. Loughborough, he chose as a destination because there was a Meeting of the temperance took place.

Precursor to the organized travel

Travel poster 1904

In the price of a shilling per Person, which was the Outward and return journey included, and probably a Ham sandwich and a Cup of tea. The group was also accompanied by their own brass band, which was at that time quite a stir: “people crowded on the streets, in the Windows, standing on rooftops and cheered us on the whole route with the warmest regards, Welcome to,” wrote Cook later. Although was not Overnight, but it was already a performance package, says Jürgen Schmude, Professor of tourism research at Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich. “This Trip to Loughborough was definitely a forerunner of the modern package tour.”

More excursions with the railway followed, and Cook expanded with time, his Repertoire more and more. From 1846 he organized group trips to Scotland, then to Ireland and the European mainland.

The first travel guide for Switzerland, in 1874

In 1866, he offered the group trips to the USA and Canada, cruises on the Nile, and finally, even travel around the whole world. So he had developed the absolute upper layer as a customer, because such a trip cost a fortune. As the inventor of the package holiday, you could not call the Cook nevertheless, the verdict of the historian and sociologist, Hasso Spode, who heads the Willy-Scharnov archive on tourism at the Technical University of Berlin. Already before him, it had been in England, organised day trips by train. “But Cook was certainly one of the most successful package tour entrepreneur who fought his competitors, and it has brought to 1900 to a world company,” said Spode.

Group of tourists in Switzerland, 1863

Package holidays to

The Cook, the biographer and tourism expert Jörn Mundt referred to him as one of the most important pioneers of tourism: “What distinguished him and his company was the ability to recognize an already-existing business ideas and their significance for the company and to use on a large scale successfully.” He says further: “A democratisation of the trip took place, however, only in the 20th century. Century”. The largest part of the population, have long had neither the money nor the time to travel. “Finally, there was no statutory leave entitlement.” Only in the second half of the 20th century. Century to have developed, then indeed the mass tourism, explains Schmude: “This is due to a variety of factors.”

Hotel coupons in 1873

“The income, the entitlement to holiday and also the mobility – for example, through cheap holiday plane – were increased. And there is also a “tourism” – came, as in Germany, for example, Neckermann, so that the Travel was for a large part of the population can afford.” In the meantime, you have surely achieved the Maximum of the mass tourism.

“Today, there are actually only shifts in the distance and in the case of the objectives,” said the tourism researcher, “some of the countries are from time to time at short notice unattractive, for example, if there is political unrest or attacks on tourists.”

Thomas Cook died in 1892 at the age of 83 years. The company remained in use until 1928 in the family’s possession. Today, the Thomas Cook Group is headquartered in London-listed tourism group.

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