Thomas Cook

This article is about the person. For other uses, see Thomas Cook (disambiguation).

Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that is now Thomas Cook Group.

Early days

Thomas Cook was born to John and Elizabeth Cook, who lived at 9 Quick Close in the village of Melbourne, Derbyshire.^[1] The couple's first child, he was named after Elizabeth's father, Thomas Perkins. John Cook died when Thomas was three years old, and his mother remarried later that same year.

At the age of 10, Cook started working as an assistant to a local market gardener for a wage of six pence a week. At the age of 14, he secured an apprenticeship with John Pegg, and spent five years as a cabinet maker.^[1]

He was brought up as a strict Baptist, and joined his local Temperance Society. In February 1826, Cook became a preacher, and toured the region as a village evangelist, distributing pamphlets, and occasionally working as a cabinet maker to earn money.^[1] After working as a part-time publisher of Baptist and Temperance pamphlets, he became a Baptist minister in 1828.

In 1832, Cook moved to Adam and Eve Street in Market Harborough. Influenced by the local Baptist minister Francis Beardsall, he took the temperance pledge on New Year's Day in 1833. As a part of the temperance movement, he organized meetings and held anti-liquor processions.^[1]

On 3 March 1833, Cook married Marianne Mason. John Mason Cook, their only son, was born on 13 January 1834 .^[1]

The first-ever excursions

Panels from the Thomas Cook Building in Leicester, displaying excursions offered by Thomas Cook

Cook's 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 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell Street station 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. This was the first privately chartered excursion train to be advertised to the general public; Cook himself acknowledging that there had been previous, unadvertised, private excursion trains.^[2] 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 led him to start his own business running rail excursions for pleasure, taking a percentage of the railway tickets.

Leicester railway station - this was built between 1892 and 1894 to replace, largely on the same site, Campbell Street station, the origin for many of Cook's early tours.

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 led him to bankruptcy. He persisted and had success when he claimed that he arranged for over 165,000 people to attend the Great Exhibition in London. 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 United States. 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 John A 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. The office also contained a shop which sold essential travel accessories including guide books, luggage, telescopes and footwear. Thomas saw his venture as both religious and social service; his son provided the commercial expertise that allowed the company to expand. In accordance with his beliefs, he and his wife also ran a small temperance hotel above the office. 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.

In 1865, the agency organised tours of the United States, picking up passengers from several departure points. John Mason Cook lead the excursion which included tours of several Civil War battlefields. A brief but bitter partnership was formed with an American businessman in 1871 called Cook, Son and Jenkins; however after an acrimonious split the agency reverted back to its original name. 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, lasting 222 days.

In 1874, Thomas Cook introduced 'circular notes', a product that later became better known by American Express's brand, 'traveller's cheques'.^[3]

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 when Cook began organising tours to the Middle East. By 1888, the company had established offices around the world, including three in Australia and one in Auckland, New Zealand, and in 1890, the company sold over 3.25 million tickets.^[4] John Mason Cook promoted, and even led, excursions to, for example, the Middle East where he was described as "the second-greatest man in Egypt".^[4] However, while arranging for the German Emperor Wilhelm II to visit Palestine in 1898, he contracted dysentery and died the following year.

Statue of Thomas Cook near Leicester railway station.

His sons, Frank Henry, Thomas Albert and Ernest Edward, 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. During the 1930s, the travel agency consolidated especially from tours to Egypt and Palestine. Indeed the company was a principal employer in Egypt, involved in shipping, transport and touring operations. 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 with the aim of expanding it further.

Company ownership

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 Forte, Midland Bank and the Automobile Association who bought the company from the British Government on 26 May 1972.^[5] Subsequently, Midland Bank acquired sole control during 1977. However, since U.S. banking laws prohibited any national banks from owning travel agencies, the U.S. operations were sold to Dun & Bradstreet in 1975.

Oid Nile Cruise

After restructuring the company and re-entering the traveller's cheque business the company prospered again. During the 1980s, Thomas Cook had its most visible business presence in the U.S., including robust travellers cheque sales to regional U.S. banks. The company had enough business critical mass to set up a computer centre near Princeton, New Jersey. Robert Gaffney and Samuel Malek were two of the notable decision makers in that era. Robert Maxwell bought substantial holdings in the company in 1988. He was expected to sell his holdings quickly as he was a publisher rather than a travel agent. However, when Crimson/Heritage purchased the U.S. division of Thomas Cook for $1.3 billion in 1989,^[6] he still maintained a substantial interest in the company until his death.

In June 1992, following the acquisition of Midland Bank by HSBC, the company was sold to the German bank, Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB), and the charter airline, LTU Group for £200 million.

In September 1994 American Express bought the corporate travel interests of Thomas Cook Travel Inc. which represented about ten percent of the British company's total revenue. However Amex was not able to buy the venerable Thomas Cook name. An American Express affiliate, Cook Travel Inc, has been operating under that name since 1991 in the United States.

Due to contractual difficulties LTU Group sold its 10% shares to WestLB in May 1995. During 1996 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 - JMC being short for John Mason Cook.

Thomas Cook logo, 1999

A modern Thomas Cook travel agency in Leeds.

On February 2, 1999, the Carlson Leisure Group merged with Thomas Cook into a holding company owned by West LB, Carlson Inc and Preussag Aktiengesellschaft ("Preussag").^[7] However, in mid-2000 Preussag acquired Thomas Cook's rival Thomson Travel and was forced to sell its majority 50.1% stake in Thomas Cook by regulatory authorities.

In March 2001, the Financial Services division was sold to Travelex who retained the right to use the Thomas Cook brand on Traveller's Cheques for 5 years. 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 2007, Thomas Cook announced a merger with competitor MyTravel with the new group to be called Thomas Cook Group plc and listed on the London Stock Exchange. The transaction was completed in June 2007 following competition authority clearance. The new group was 51% owned by Arcandor (new name of Karstadt).

Thomas Cook made a controversial business move in 2008, buying out Canadian travel wholesaler IFS Voyages (including Fun Sun Vacations, Intair, Exotik Tours, Boomerang Tours, etc.).

In March 2010 Thomas Cook acquired the UK travel insurance and airport parking provider Essential Travel and launched Thomas Cook Essentials. This was followed by a merger with The Co-operative Travel group on 8 October 2010 to create the UK's largest retail travel network.

At the 2011 AGM Thomas Cook shareholders mounted a "revolt" over executive bonuses with only 53.2 percent voting in favour of the remuneration report.^[8]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e} Andrew Williamson (2001). The Golden Age of Travel (Travel Heritage). Thomas Cook. ISBN 9781900341332. 
2. ^ Ingle, R., 1991 Thomas Cook of Leicester, Bangor, Headstart History
3. ^ Competition Commission Report 1995
4. ^ ^{a b} Anthony Coleman (1999). Millennium. Transworld Publishers. pp. 231–233. ISBN 0-593-04478-9. 
5. ^ "Thomas Cook packaged and sold". BBC. 26 May 1972. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/26/newsid_3003000/3003665.stm. 
6. ^ "Thomas Cook joins forces with Crimson; $1.3 billion agency created". Travel Weekly. December 18, 1989. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1:8209167/Thomas+Cook+joins+forces+with+Crimson%3b+%241%7eR%7e3+billion+agency+created%7eR%7e+(Crimson%7eS%7eHeritage+Travel).html?refid=ip_hf. 
7. ^ "Westdeutsche Landesbank-Carlson-Thomas Cook (Merger)". Commission of the European Communities. 26 May 1999. http://www.worldlii.org/eu/cases/ECComm/1999/26.html. 
8. ^ [1] The Independent. February 12th 2011

External links

• Thomas Cook Biography
• Article about Thomas Cook

Persondata
Name	Cook, Thomas
Alternative names
Short description	Founder of founded the travel agency Thomas Cook Group
Date of birth	22 November 1808
Place of birth	Melbourne, Derbyshire, England
Date of death	18 July 1892
Place of death