Thomas Cook, a British travel agency, began life in July 1841 offering day trips to teetotallers between Leicester and Loughborough. In its heyday it counted Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill among its customers before evolving into a leading modern package-holiday firm. But its story ended ignominiously with holidaymakers being locked in a Tunisian hotel by security guards
demanding that they pay again for their rooms if they wanted to go home.
The world’s oldest holiday company collapsed on September 23rd after a decade of financial troubles. It leaves behind just one fully-integrated tour operator in Europe that still owns shops, airliners and hotels itself: TUI of Germany.
Source: The Economist
