The Thomas Cook brand name – the oldest name in world tourism – has been saved by a Chinese conglomerate, which is buying the name from the liquidators of the collapsed travel group for £11m.
The deal, which also includes hotel brands Casa Cook and Cook’s Club, gives Chinese group Fosun access to Thomas Cook trademarks, websites, social media accounts and software across most of the world.
Thomas Cook owes its name to a humble and deeply religious 32-year-old cabinet-maker who, one June morning in 1841, hiked the 15 miles from his home in Market Harborough to Leicester, to attend a temperance meeting.
The former Baptist preacher believed that the ills of Victorian society stemmed largely from alcohol and, presumably fatigued from his walk, realised he could deploy the power of Britain’s flourishing rail network to help spread the word.
Addressing the temperance meeting, he suggested that a train be hired to carry the movement’s supporters to the next meeting in Loughborough.
Thus, on 5 July 1841, some 500 passengers travelled by a special train for the 24-mile round trip, paying a shilling apiece.
Over the next few years, Cook laid on ever more trains, introducing thousands of Britons to train travel for the first time. The first such outing to be run for commercial purposes was a trip to Liverpool in 1845.
Over the next decade or so, the business expanded to offer overseas trips, to France, Switzerland, Italy and beyond, to the US, Egypt and India.
His more business-minded son John expanded the tour operator and its reach was such that the government enlisted its expertise in an effort, ultimately in vain, to relieve General Gordon at the siege of Khartoum in 1885.
John’s three sons inherited the business, which incorporated as Thos Cook & Son Ltd in 1924 and benefited from the increasing ease of international travel.
Its first flirtation with collapse came during the second world war, when the government requisitioned some of its assets and it was sold to Britain’s railway companies, effectively a nationalisation.
But it boomed in the postwar years as growing prosperity fuelled the appetite for holidays and it returned to private ownership in 1972.
Since then, it has changed hands and changed shape via a series of mergers and takeovers. It nearly collapsed in 2011 but averted its demise with a bailout deal funded by banks.
Now, after 178 years of operation, it has ceased trading.
Fosun, which was Thomas Cook’s largest shareholder and a key part of the failed rescue deal, owns a variety of businesses including Club Med and Wolverhampton Wanderers FC.
Thomas Cook collapsed after running up huge debts as it expanded through takeovers amid stiff competition from online rivals. Its collapse triggered the largest ever peacetime repatriation to bring home 150,000 UK holidaymakers from overseas.
The company’s UK branch network was bought for £6m by John and Irene Hays, who run Sunderland-based Hays Travel. The couple are rebranding the shops under the name of their family firm.
Other parts of the company have continued to trade during the liquidation. Billionaire property tycoon Petter Stordalen led a deal this week to acquire Thomas Cook’s Nordic business, also known as the Ving Group. It includes brands such as Globetrotter, Spies and Thomas Cook’s Scandinavian airline.
The brand name deal, announced on Friday, marked the final chapter in Fosun’s approaches to Thomas Cook. Fosun was a key player in a proposed £900m bailout in August. It offered to inject hundreds of millions of pounds, but the deal fell through when the firm failed to secure further backing from other lenders or the government.
Thomas Cook was founded in 1841 in Derbyshire by an eponymous cabinet-maker, who took his first customers 12 miles by train from Leicester to a temperance meeting in Loughborough.
In its statement, Fosun described Thomas Cook as a “pioneer of modern travel and one of the most well known tourism brands around the world”.
Qian Jiannong, Fosun’s chairman, said: “The group has always believed in the brand value of Thomas Cook. The acquisition of the Thomas Cook brand will enable the group to expand its tourism business, building on the extensive brand awareness of Thomas Cook and the robust growth momentum of Chinese outbound tourism.”
