Cheap holidays

A package holiday or package tour consists of transport and accommodation advertised and sold together by a vendor known as a tour operator. Other services may be provided like a rental car, activities or outings during the holiday. Transport can be via charter airline to a foreign country. Package holidays are organised by a tour operator and sold to a consumer by a travel agent. Some travel agents are owned by tour operators, others are independent. Contents 1 Organised Tours 2 Package Tours 3 Dynamic Packaging 4 Key UK Package Holiday Operators 5 Dynamic Packaging Companies 6 Notes Organised Tours The first organised tours dated back to Thomas Cook who, on 5 July 1841, chartered a train to take a group of temperance campaigners from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough, twenty miles away. Thomas Cook - the company - grew to become one of the largest and most well known travel agents before being nationalised in 1948. With the gradual decline of visits to British seaside resorts after the Second World War, Thomas Cook began promoting foreign holidays (particularly Italy, Spain and Switzerland) in the early 1950s. Information films were shown 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 buy-out on 26 May 1972[1] Package Tours Vladimir Raitz, the co-founder of the Horizon Holiday Group, pioneered the first mass package holidays abroad with charter flights between Gatwick airport and Corsica in 1950, and organised the first package holiday to Palma in 1952, Lourdes in 1953, and the Costa Brava and Sardinia in 1954. By the late 1950s and 1960s, these cheap package holidays - which combined flight, transfers and accommodation - provided the first chance for most people in the United Kingdom to have affordable travel abroad. One of the first charter airlines was Euravia, which commenced flights from Luton Airport in 1962. Despite opening up mass tourism to Crete and the Algarve in 1970, the package tour industry declined during the 1970s. On 15 August 1974, the industry was shaken when the second-largest tour operator, Court Line which operated under the brand names of Horizon and Clarksons, collapsed. Nearly 50,000 tourists were stranded overseas and a further 100,000 faced the loss of booking deposits. Recently a growing number of consumers are avoiding package holidays and instead are travelling with budget airlines and booking their own accommodation. Dynamic Packaging The latest trend in package holidays is dynamic packaging, enabling consumers to build their own package of flights, accommodation, and a hire car instead of a pre-defined package. Dynamic packages differ from traditional package tours in that the pricing is always based on current availability, escorted group tours are rarely included, and trip-specific add-ons such as airport parking and show tickets are often available. Dynamic packages are similar in that often the air, hotel, and car rates are available only as part of a package or only from a specific seller. Dynamic packages are primarily sold online, but online travel agencies will also sell by phone owing to the strong margins and high sale price of the product. Key UK Package Holiday Operators In the UK, the seeming downturn in the package holiday market led to the consolidation of the tour operator market, which is now dominated by a few large tour operators. The major operators are Thomson, part of the World of TUI, Thomas Cook, MyTravel, and First Choice. Under these umbrella brands there exists a whole range of different holiday operators catering to different markets, such as Club 18-30 or Simply Travel. Dynamic Packaging Companies To meet Wikipedia's quality standards and comply with our Neutral Point of View policy, this article or section may require cleanup. The current version of the article or section reads like an advertisement. Please discuss this issue on the talk page. Editing help is available. Expedia is the leading travel agency providing dynamic packages to consumers, while companies such as EzRez [1], Neat [2]and Trisept Solutions [3] provide private-label dynamic packaging solutions for the web sites of travel suppliers such as jetBlue Airways and United Airlines. Companies such as CSI Media [4]now offer bespoke Dynamic Packaging solutions to the travel industry using their Travelberry platform [5] for clients such as Skybargains.co.uk [6]. Notes ^ Thomas Cook packaged and sold (HTML). BBC (1972). Retrieved on 26 May 1972. Search Term: "Package_holiday" Categories: Wikipedia articles needing style editing | Tourism

Family Values