landmark 175th anniversary
2013 Concept store, Lakeside
In it for the long run: branch manager Deborah Young
Deborah Young, 55, has worked for Cook for 36 years and is now manager of the Milton Keynes concept store
I started at Peterbor- ough head office in
1980 as an administration support girl in the losses and claims department. When my husband and
1869 Egypt and Palestine
Mr Thomas Cook: the social idealist
When Thomas Cook created a travel company, his goal was to improve society.
Described as an idealist, Cook
organised his first train excursion on July 5, 1841, from Leicester to Loughborough, for supporters of the teetotal Temperance Movement, and by 1855 he had started to organise trips overseas. Thomas Cook archivist
Paul Smith says: “For Thomas Cook, travel was about social improvement. If people drank less, became better educated and did more with their time and money, society would benefit. Travel was a catalyst for improving society.
“If he could persuade trains
to offer cheaper fares, he could promote them and enable more people from a lower class, the middle classes, to travel. In those days people did not travel for leisure; only those who were very wealthy. He was trying to make travel easier, cheaper and safer.” Not only
Thomas Cook
did Cook produce what was to be the forerunner
1965 Two firsts: Cook’s net profit tops £1m and Spain receives one million British visitors
1984 The ‘Don’t just book it. Thomas Cook it!’ tagline is introduced
of the modern brochure in 1851 – a publication called TheExcursionist, which included rail fares – he also established what is now the UK’s oldest travel agency chain. He opened his first shop, Thomas
Cook & Son, at 98 Fleet Street, London, in 1865, by which time he claimed to have booked one million passengers on his trips. Famous customers include
Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill. The shop sold railway tickets,
tours, including to Paris, Italy and Switzerland, as well as luggage, guidebooks and telescopes.
2007 Cook merges with MyTravel
I moved to Oxford I got a transfer to retail and became a ‘tourist cashier’ dealing with foreign exchange. After a couple of years I moved on to the counter. Bookings were predominantly by phone and paperwork was by hand. Before the internet, it was more of a lottery in terms of whether the holiday was what customers dreamt of. I used to ring up operators and they were constantly engaged. At brochure launch there were queues outside. Now we have plasma
screens instead of window cards and the internet instead of brochure racks. It looks modern but it’s still all about the interaction with customers. I love the job just as much as ever. After 9/11 people rang for reassurance; Thomas Cook shines in these situations. Even during the financial crisis I knew we’d come out of it. I’ve never doubted I’ll work for the same company until I retire.
2011 Share price dives 75% as Cook turns to banks for support
2013 Thomas Cook unveils its new ‘Sunny Heart’ group logo
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