Social historians will mourn the demise of the world’s oldest travel company, founded by a Baptist carpenter in northern England in 1841; their corporate counterparts will not. With more than 500 high street outlets, Thomas Cook demonstrated a stunning inability to adapt to changing travel habits. The rise of budget airlines and disruptors like Airbnb combined with the weak pound and the unusually hot summer of 2018 to kill off the company which had suffered a near-death experience in 2011.
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Britain’s Thomas Cook needs to find an extra 200 million pounds to satisfy its lenders or one of the world’s oldest holiday company risks collapse, potentially stranding thousands of holidaymakers across Europe.
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