First Travel Agency “Thomas Cook and Son”

Thomas Cook (Outline)

I) Thomas Cook was the pioneer and the most innovative person ever in tourism industry.

II) Early days

A- Begginings

B- Studies at monastery

C- Thomas Cook as a Missioner

III) First-ever organized journeys

A- First chartered excursion

1- Midland Counties Railway

2- First idea of excursion.

3- Movement of 540 campaigners.

B- Other Excursions

1- To Liverpool.

2- To Scotland.

C- First Excursion Abroad

1- To France.

2- “Grand Circular Tours”.

3- “Inclusive independent travel”.

IV) First Travel Agency “Thomas Cook and Son”

A- Foreign and domestic travel

1- Creation of coupons (Vouchers)

2- First tours to the U.S.

V) Legacy

A- Biggest Business in the world

1- Tourism is everywhere today.

2- Current travel agencies.

VI) Conclusion

In my opinion, Thomas Cook was the pioneer and the most innovative person ever in tourism industry.

Introduction

Today, every people who wants to take a guided tour to all corners of the earth, can do it for granted. If you have the resources, in two or three days you can be anywhere in the world if you want. 150 years ago, this was not possible. There were no travel agencies and you had to do everything on your own to go on a trip. By the 1840’s Thomas Cook, was the first person to create an organized tour for a group of people, looking profitable the creation of assisted tours. For this reason I think that Thomas Cook was the most innovative person ever in tourism industry.

Early days

Thomas Cook was born on November 22, 1808. Son of John and Elizabeth Cook lived near the village of Melbourne, Derbyshire. When Thomas was 3 years old, his father died, leaving his wife in such poverty that she could not even put on his grave very simple headstones. Poverty forced the young widow to remarry with James Smithard, who was an honorable man. He treated Thomas in a good way and sent him to school at a monastery.

In February 1826, after his 17 birthday, Thomas Cook became a full member of the Baptist Church. Then, he moved from Melbourne to Loughborough, where he started to write articles for the Missioners Journal. But after a period of time doing this, he didn’t feel well so started looking for missionary work, which he probably inherited from his grandfather, who encouraged him to preach in towns and villages.

In 1829, Thomas wrote a diary about the missions he developed. He covered about 2692 miles predicating, of which about 2,106 were on foot. As time passed by, the young missioner became more popular obtaining more attention from people. So he started to earn much more moral satisfaction, as well as the incomes. This was an important step for him towards the founding of travel industry.

On March 1833, Thomas married Marianne Mason, and had one child the year after. In the same year (1833), Thomas cook took the temperance pledge and organized anti-alcohol meetings.

First organized journeys

With the creation of the “Midland Counties Railway” in 1841, Thomas Cook had the idea to offer Excursions, so he arranged a the trip of 11 miles from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough, for 540 campaigners of temperance movement, this excursion included rail tickets and meal during the journey for all passengers. This became the first privately chartered excursion for general people.

Afterwards, Thomas Cook made an agreement with that railway company, so he provided the passengers for the excursions, taking a percentage of the railway tickets. Then, in summer 1845, Thomas Cook arranged the first purely entertaining trip, so he started to sell tickets for people who wanted a trip from Leicester to Liverpool and back.

A year after, Thomas Cook went to Scotland with the purpose of creating a new route for a trip with stop-offs.

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