Travel Agency

Management
CHAPTER ONE
T R AV E L T R A D E - H I S T O R I C A L
PERSPECTIVES

B Y: S A M A H J A A FA R

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 Introduction

The business of travel agency has undergone significant changes in the last two decades. Gone are the days when there were no formal travel
intermediaries to help travelers visit places of interest. Several travel obstacles discouraged people to travel distance places. Only a selected few
managed to travel due to their own curiosity, motivation and spending ability. Many could not make it due to:

The lack of communication network along with facilities and amenities.

Destination did not even have minimum facilities to hold the visitors for an hour long.

So many changes have taken place over the centuries. Tourism destinations are connected by modes of transport and visitors find a place of stay at
the destinations. When modern communication system came into existence in18th and 19th centuries, the world could witness mass travel leading
to the demand of luxury transport and advance arrangement of stay and sightseeing. Those advance booking soft rain, ferry, bus, airlines, theater
hall, entry fees, etc were organized by a person with sound experience and information.

In the beginning of travel agency business, travel agents could help their own community members or fellow members travel safely. Later, it
became a formal business with all professional practices. Gradually, the business has grown in such a scale that competitive multinational travel
companies have entered into this travel business.

This chapter will explain the origin of travel agency business in the world with reference to the contribution of Richard Cox and Thomas Cook for
having set up professional travel agency in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively.

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Origin of Travel Agency Business

The nature of travel agency business is to provide holiday-related services such as ticket booking, transfer arrangement, hotel
room booking and arrangement of ground transportation, venue selection and booking for MICE activities. The scope of
business of travel agents was narrow and confined to selected services. Moreover, the business was managed with small investment.
It was risky business as it was depending upon the natural and socio-political along with cultural factors.

The amount of profit was too little to attract new entrants to do this business. A number of restrictions were imposed by the
government on travel agents and tour operators for entry into tour operation business. Tour operators had no choice, but to deal with
other problems like confirmation of hotel rooms, safety in travel, quality of foods, travel documents, volatile political system,
language differences, cultural differences, cumber some and tedious travelling, long journey, etc. However, invention of
railway sands team ship as a common mode of transport changed the perceptions of people on travelling distance places.

Thus, Thomas Cook could emerge as the first professional Travel Agent in the wake of introduction of affordable railway services
in the United Kingdom. However, prior to Thomas Cook, Cox &Kings introduced travel business in UK.

You will learn about the contributions of these two big travel agents along with a couple of other travel agents in Europe, USA and
India.

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Thomas Cook and Its Origin

Thomas Cook is known to have aroused interests to help people in England undertake travel within the
country or neighboring country. The 9th June, 1841 is a red letter day in the history of travel trade in the
world.

On this day, Thomas Cook walked from Harborough to Leicester to attend a temperance meeting and he
stumbled upon with an idea of arranging train tickets for the members of Temperance Society where he was
serving as an evangelist and Baptist book seller. He started his carrier as a Cabinet Maker. A 32-year old
cabinet-maker could become world’s founder professional travel agent. He achieved many mile stones
during his lifetime and many were achieved by his son John Mason Cook.

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Establishment of Modern Travel Agency

The beginning of the establishment of modern travel agency in the world started with the railway journey
from Leicester, Nottingham and Derby to Liverpool. He made some profits from this trip. The first mass
tour across England with entertainment activities began in1845 to provide value-for-money package.

Sir Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace, persuaded Thomas Cook to devote himself to bringing
workers from Yorkshire and the Midlands to London for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The untapped
opportunity was grabbed by Thomas Cook with a lot of determination and enthusiasm.

Thomas Cook conducted tours for 150,000 people to visit the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park from Yorks
hire and the Midlands in 1851 followed by the first continental tour in 1855. He accompanied two land
mark tours to the International Exhibition from Harwich to Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Frankfurt,
Heidelberg, Strasbourg and to Paris.

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Travel Innovations

Thomas Cook introduced Hotel Coupons in 1868 to help customers check in hotels without any hassle.
Hotels also honoured the hotel coupons issued by Thomas Cook. It reduced the restrain some procedures of
payments through cash. Hotels accepted the coupons for providing rooms and other allied services such as
food, entertainment, transport etc. Hotels were benefited from the coup on sawbuck numbers of rooms were
booked in advance and it was only transaction. Thomas Cook in turn received commission from hotels as
both maintained the accounts of their periodic transactions.

Thomas Cook introduced Circular Note in 1874 to help customers travel safely. Circular Notes were
accepted across the hotels, restaurants and transport operators at several tourism destinations and cities in
the Europe and the USA. The Cook’s Circular Note got circulated in New York and it was treated as a
nearly invention of traveler’s cheque in the world. More particularly, the circular notes were easily
exchanged against the local currency that provided much relief to the travelers in meeting the contingency
expenditures like shopping, tips, transfer, extra services, etc.

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Package Tour for Middle Class

The massive industrialization in the mid 19 th century made massive impact on the increase in income and
consumption. It created sizable middle-class people with much disposable income. Taking the advantage of
the trends, Thomas Cook took the benefits of rising middle-class customers when customized package tours
were designed to suit their travel needs. Those middle-class customers demanded for visiting destinations in
Switzerland and Italy. He negotiated with innkeepers and hoteliers to provide rooms and meals at good
prices.

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Tour Across Intra-Continental

Thomas Cook continued to expand his business in Europe too. He conducted Grand Circular Tours to Brussels,
Cologne, the Rhine, Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg and Paris, with return trip to London via Le Havre or
Dieppe. He undertook the familiarization tours to Switzerland in June 1863 to visit the places of interest, contact
hotels and innkeepers. He accompanied sixty affluent class clients and conducted the tour to Geneva. Thomas
Cook organized trips in the Northern and Western Europe in 1863.

With the co-operation of the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railways, Thomas Cook began to issue Circular
Train Tickets (in both English and French) between Paris and the Alps. He then conducted the first circular tours
to Switzerland, after having made an immediate success. He also arranged the package tour across the Alps. The
first Italian tours organized in the summer of 1864 during which Thomas Cook escorted two large groups. One
group was taken to Florence and parts of central Italy and the other one was accompanied to Rome and Naples.

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Intercontinental Tour

Thomas Cook conducted the tour to the USA in the North American continent. He introduced the ready-
made package tour to London, Paris, Rome and Geneva. In the subsequent time, the Atlantic Ocean was
crossed for conducting outbound tours to North America. It was Mr. John Mason Cook (son of Thomas
Cook) who conceived the operation and management of the first-ever American tour.

Thomas Cook undertook an exploratory trip to the North America in 1865 for the sake of gathering
information about the transport, accommodation, food, sightseeing, safety and security, etc. The Company
extended its operation to Egypt and Palestine in the year 1869 in order to cater the demand for visiting
Pyramids in Egypt and religious

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The Great Journey (From East to West)

Thomas set out for the Round-the- World-Tour from Leicester in 1872 when he reached at the age of 63.

They travelled from New York to San Francisco by rail.

They cruised to Japan followed by to China across the Inland Sea.

He visited Singapore, Ceylon and India. While leaving Mumbai (then Bombay), they crossed the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to Cairo.

He travelled back to London from Cairo, Egypt.

Thomas Cook alone set off on an extended tour of Egypt and Palestine.

Finally, he reached back home after traveling through Turkey, Greece, Italy and France.

It was a 222 - day World Tour. He was speechless after seeing the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the Pyramid. The world tour
was a great achievement for expansion of business to different parts of the world. He gathered information about the people, culture,
political systems, economic systems, facilities, amenities, transport connectivity, etc. Free Independent Travelers (FIT) started buying
packages from Thomas Cook. There were more demands of FITs to buy the Round-the-World Package Tour..

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 Second Generation Thomas Cook Business

Thomas Cook was very fortunate to have his son John Mason Cook as an able successor to manage promotion, marketing and administration
of company affairs.

Mr. Cook set up overseas editions of “The Excursionist”. It was the newspaper launched by Thomas Cook in 1851 to educate customers about
the places interest in France, Germany, India, Australasia, America and the Far East in the package tour.

They introduced winter sports holidays, tours by motor car and commercial air travel. The company was registered as Thomas Cook & Son
Ltd in 1924.

Thomas Cook & Son Ltd was sold to the Belgian Compagnie International edes Wagons- Lits et des Grands Express Européens in 1928. The
Wagons Lits was a leading operator of most of Europe’s luxury sleeping cars, including the Orient Express.

The Wagons-Lits headquarters in Paris was seized by British forces and Mr. Cook’s British assets were requisitioned by the British
Government immediately after the outbreak of World War II.

The first German Travel agencies in the line of modern travel agencies were known as Immigration Agencies. These agencies were engaged in
booking ship’s passages and sometimes group journeys from a collection point to the point of embarkation.

The First Indian Owned Travel Company

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