Laker's Skytrain - The first No Frills Airline

Skytrain to America

Sir Freddie Laker pioneered the idea of cheap air travel and introduced the first ‘no-frills’ concept to aviation with his ‘Skytrain to America’ in 1977.  

This entrepreneurial venture was so ahead of its time that rival airlines conspired successfully to crush his business.

Before Skytrain, international flights were for the rich. After the Second World War it was thought that competition between airlines might lead to a dereliction of passenger safety, and so the market was strictly regulated by the International Air Transport Association.

IATA allowed state airlines to maintain a monopoly offering identical services at high prices. (By 1971 the only exception was charter airlines catering for the growing package holiday trade. Under an IATA rule intended to preserve the monopoly, charter passengers needed six months' membership of an "affinity group" whose main purpose was not travel, groups such as the Dahlia Society or the Left Hand Club – see previous post)

Laker, whose airline was being regularly fined for carrying large numbers of bogus Rose Growers to America, came up with an easier system. Passengers who wanted a cheap flight could queue for a ticket at the airport, just as they would at a railway station before taking a train. It took six years of campaigning and lobbying to persuade the British and American governments to agree to the idea.

Queuing for  Skytain tickets at Victoria

The first Skytrain took off for New York in September 1977. Laker offered no frills but at £59 it cost a third of any other ticket. He made £1 million profit in the first year, and by 1980 was carrying one in seven transatlantic passengers.

The other major airlines soon took action, offering cheap fares for the first time and when Pan Am cut the price of its regular service by two-thirds in October 1981, Laker's passengers deserted him.

And then, in February 1982, Laker Airways went into receivership with debts of £264 million. The collapse was so sudden that its flights were turned round in mid-air!  At first it seemed that Laker had overstretched, borrowing heavily to finance 15 new planes just as the pound fell against the dollar.

But in 1983 the liquidators Touche Ross began an anti-trust action in America, claiming a billion dollars from 10 major airline and the allegations went beyond predatory pricing. British Airways, Pan Am, TWA and Lufthansa were all said to have colluded to plot Laker's downfall.

In particular, several airlines had threatened the manufacturer McDonnell Douglas that they would buy elsewhere if it rescheduled Laker's debt. (The Justice Department found the evidence in a school project by the daughter of a McDonnell Douglas director!)

The action threatened BA's privatisation, and in 1985 the defendants settled out of court the £35 million owed to Laker's creditors, staff and passengers. Laker himself reluctantly accepted £6 million in compensation and retreated to the Bahamas.

Frederick Alfred Laker was born in Canterbury on August 6 1922. His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family when Freddie was five, and his mother then worked as a cleaner. At the local Simon Langton School Freddie did not shine academically but told friends he was going to be a millionaire. His first job was delivering coal for an uncle.

At 16 he joined the flying-boat builders Short Brothers of Rochester as a teaboy and apprentice engineer, and studied maths and economics at night school. In the Second World War he worked for the Air Transport Auxiliary where he excelled at improvising repairs. He became flight engineer and then qualifyed as a ferry pilot himself.

By 1946, with a loan from a friend he set up Aviation Traders, dealing in war-surplus and then carrying passengers and freight in converted Halifax bombers. Laker made his first fortune from the Berlin airlift of 1948. The government chartered every available aeroplane from the many small independent airlines at generous rates. His profit, however, came from selling spare parts to the other airlines.

When the airlift ended, Laker judged the market to be overcrowded, and, as others went under, had his team at work smelting 6,000 engines for a saucepan manufacturer. In 1951 he returned to charter, carrying troops for the Army in aircraft rebuilt from crashed ones

In 1953 his Channel Air Bridge began flying passengers, and then cars, from Southend to Calais. In 1958 he sold his business, which was merged with others to form British United Airways. He became managing director of BUA, and it grew into the largest independent airline.  

British United Airways

In 1965 he resigned, forming Laker Airways to capitalise on the booming package holiday trade. Three innovations made the airline successful:

1) Laker chartered his aircraft to tour companies at a rate that cost them less the more they flew.

2) He saved money on fuel by telling his crews to fly at higher altitudes than usual and by pioneering the reduced thrust technique on take-off.

3) He also kept his fleet busy off-season, flying winter tours to the Mediterranean and Muslims to Mecca for the Haj.

Laker enjoyed the good life. At his peak he bought a Rolls-Royce each year and racehorses for his Epsom stud. He was once photographed zooming around the Gatwick runway pretending to be a Spitfire and he was voted "Man of the Year" and in 1978 knighted by the Callaghan government.

Yet he never lost his Kentish accent and had a reputation for frugality.  Laker's management style was to dominate. He knew each aspect of his business as well as any employee, and, while inspiring great loyalty, knew his own mind and got his own way. 

Vladimir Raitz - The First Travel Pioneer

Continuing the theme of great travel entrepreneurs, let’s remember a true pioneer of the post-war package holiday industry; Vladimir Raitz.  

In the period from his first  trips to Corsica, Vladimir Raitz built the first, and one of the UK's most respected, holiday companies, Horizon Holidays, overseeing the business until the early 1970s.

Corsica for £32:10s per person and as much wine as you could put away

When Vladimir Raitz launched his business, few people could afford a foreign holiday. A return flight to Nice in 1950 for example, cost £70 (or about £1,700 today).  What Vladimir offered in 1950 was an all-inclusive package holiday to Corsica for £32 10s - including return flight, tented accommodation on the beach "delicious meat-filled meals and as much local wine as [you] could put away".

His first flight, with 11 paying customers looking forward to a week in the sun, took off from Gatwick in May 1950 in a government-surplus Dakota DC3. The plane landed at Lyon to refuel before continuing to Calvi. The whole journey took six hours.

Vladimir later recalled: "When we arrived at Corsica airport, there was nothing at all – not even a little hut. [We had] to shelter from the sun under the wings of the plane while we waited for the bus to pick us up." Once at the beach, the holiday-makers were greeted by large canvas tents, each with two beds. There was an area was set aside for "ablutions", a dining room, bar and dance-floor. "A pastis was a few pence," Raitz said, "a bottle of wine was nine pence."

His company was Horizon Holidays

Horizon Holidays..

 

Horizon soon added Majorca as a destination, followed by Sardinia, Malaga and Perpignan.  As it expanded, the firm added Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava, then a small fishing village with a handful of hotels and bars and no bank. Vladimir later regretted the over-development of that part of the Catalan coastline.

None of this was achieved without difficulty. British European Airways objected to his flying to Corsica because it constituted "material diversion of traffic" – despite the fact that they did not fly to the island. And at first he was only allowed to carry teachers and students as all other occupations were banned!

There were also strict government regulations about how much money you could take on an overseas holiday: "At first it was £50, and that was later cut to £25," he recalled. "But we could keep the price of accommodation down to about £15, and the charter flight was payable in sterling, so there was still some spending money left over."

His Early Days in Russia, Berlin and Mill Hill

Vladimir Raitz was born to Jewish middle-class family in Moscow on May 23 1922. His father was a doctor and his mother, Cecilia, a qualified dentist. In 1927 Cecilia left Moscow to join her parents, who had fled to Berlin. She took Vladimir with her and he never saw his father again.

In Berlin he saw the rise of Hitler but in 1936, Vladimir joined his Grandparents in London and went to Mill Hill School. He arrived fluent in Russian, German, Polish and French, but with no English and yet by the end of his first term he was top of the class in that subject. 

Vladimir went on to the London School of Economics, where he read History, then joined the Reuters news agency. Throughout the Second World War he interpreted foreign news broadcasts for Reuters and United Press.

He was still working for Reuters when, in 1949, his grandmother died, leaving him £3,000. He left the agency, using his windfall to establish Horizon Holidays.

He was aware that since the end of the war there had been a surplus of government aircraft which were available for charter. Most were taken up for transporting cargo but Raitz saw a different opportunity, having just been invited by another expatriate Russian to visit Corsica, where the man was running a beachside "holiday camp".

Competition Appears

Even Vladimir could not have foreseen the huge expansion in holiday travel that was to follow his Corsica experiment. Between 1960 and 1967, the number of Britons going abroad soared from 2.25 million a year to 5 million. Horizon became one of the UK's largest operators, spawning Club 18-30, which was, he claimed, simply a holiday company for young people and not as a vehicle for sun, booze and sex that it later became.

However, the company could not cope with the vicious price war that broke out in the early 1970s, sparked off mainly by the biggest operator, Clarksons. Horizon began to lose money. After a desperate struggle to keep it afloat, the final blow was dealt by the oil price crisis which followed the 1972 Arab-Israeli war. In February 1974 it was taken over by Court Line, Clarksons' parent company. Court Line itself went bust shortly afterwards, owing £7 million to some 100,000 holiday-makers.

The collapse was particularly serious because there were then no proper bonds or protection schemes to safeguard people's holidays against bankruptcy. In the wake of the event, Civil Aviation Authority bonds and the Air Travel Reserve Fund were established.

Later Reflections on the Effects of Package Travel

Vladimir admited to having mixed feelings about the consequences of modern tourism. Benidorm, he noted in 1989, "looks bloody awful now – but that's progress, I suppose". More thoughtfully, he added: "On one hand, I hate to see resorts being despoiled. Take Minorca. There used to be a beach, no road to it, you used to scramble down through the scrub. Today it is ringed with hotels. To that extent, I am sad... On the other hand, I think it's marvellous that 12 or 13 million people can have a Mediterranean holiday and enjoy themselves."

"Providing a fortnight in the Mediterranean sun to a wide segment of the British public, hereto the prerogative of well-to-do members of the bourgeoisie, brought with it what can only be described as a social revolution; the man in the street acquired a taste for wine, for foreign food, started to learn French, Spanish or Italian, made friends in the foreign lands he had visited – in fact became more 'cosmopolitan', with all that that entailed."

And Thomson too..

Vladimir remained one of the principal players in the British tour operating business for 25 years. On behalf of Sir Gordon Brunton, of the Thomson organisation, for example, he acquired Skytours and Riviera Holidays, which merged to become Thomson Holidays.

Despite the downfall of Horizon, Raitz remained in the travel industry. During the late 1970s he organised tours for the Maltese Tourist Board where I had the pleasure of working alongside him at Medallion Holidays.

Vladimir Gavrilovich Raitz, entrepreneur, born 23 May 1922; died 31 August 2010

Thomas Cook - The First Tour Operator!

Thomas Cook, was was born  in Melbourne, South Derbyshire, on 22nd November, 1808 leaving school at the age of ten to work as a gardener's boy on Lord Melbourne's estate.

The First Signs of a Travel Career

Cook attended the local Methodist Sunday School and was described as "an earnest, active, devoted, young Christian". He soon became a teacher at the Sunday School and eventually was appointed as its superintendent. At seventeen Thomas joined the local Temperance Society and over the next few years spent his spare-time campaigning against the consumption of alcohol.

In 1827 Cook abandoned his apprenticeship to become an itinerant village missionary, on a salary of £36 a year.  His job was to spread the Word by preaching, distributing tracts, and setting up Sunday schools throughout the south midland counties.  Thus began his career in travel.

Cook married in 1833 and became an active member of the local Temperance Society making speeches and publishing pamphlets pointing out the dangers of alcohol consumption. He also arranged large group picnics where participants were, according to the Temperance Messenger, sustained with "biscuits, buns and ginger beer". In 1840 Cook decided to make a career out of his temperance beliefs and founded the Children's Temperance Magazine.

The First ‘Package’ Holiday

In 1841 Cook had the idea of arranging an eleven-mile rail excursion from Leicester to a Temperance Society meeting in Loughborough on the newly extended Midland Railway. Cook charged his customers one shilling and this included the cost of the rail ticket and the food on the journey. The venture was a great success and Cook decided to start his own business running rail excursions.

He described this as ‘the starting point of a career of labour and pleasure which has expanded into … a mission of goodwill and benevolence on a grand scale’

The First ‘Brochure’

Cook set up as a bookseller and printer in Leicester. He specialized in temperance literature and opened up temperance hotels in Derby and Leicester and continued to organize excursions.  In 1845, having won a reputation as an entrepreneur who could obtain cheap rates from the railway companies for large parties, he undertook his first profit-making excursion - to Liverpool, Caernarfon, and Mount Snowdon. Cook wrote a handbook which resembled in essential respects the modern tour operator's brochure.

In 1846 Cook took 500 people from Leicester on a tour of Scotland that involved visits to Glasgow and Edinburgh. One of his greatest achievements was to arrange for over 165,000 people to attend the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. 

The First Ticketing Problems!

Cook's travel business was badly damaged in 1862 when the Scottish railway companies refused to issue any more group tickets for Cook's popular tours north of the border. Cook instead decided to take advantage of new rail links to take large numbers of tourists to the continent. In his first year he arranged for 2000 visitors to travel France and 500 to Switzerland. In 1864 Cook began taking tourists to Italy.

The First Mass-Market Backlash

Cook was charged with swamping Europe with "everything that is low-bred, vulgar and ridiculous". And others complained about the bad taste of taking tourists to the battlefields of the American Civil War.

Cook moved his business to London. His son John managed the London office of the company that was now known as Thomas Cook & Son and helped to expand the company by opening offices in Manchester, Brussels, and Cologne. In 1869 the company arranged tours of Egypt and the Holy Land, something he described as "the greatest event of my tourist life".

The First Boardroom Revolt

Thomas Cook had a difficult relationship with his son and only made him a partner in 1871. His reluctance was probably due to disputes between the two men, mainly over financial matters. Unlike Thomas, John believed that business should be kept separate from religion and philanthropy. He also upset his father by being more adventurous in investing money. He opened a hotel at Luxor and refurbished the Nile steamers of the khedive, from whom he obtained the passenger agency, thus helping to make Egypt a safer and more attractive destination.

The First Round The World Tour

By 1872 Thomas Cook & Son was able to offer a 212 day Round the World Tour for 200 guineas. The journey included a steamship across the Atlantic, a stage coach from the east to the west coast of America, a paddle steamer to Japan, and an overland journey across China and India.

Thomas continued to disagree with his son about the way the company should be run. After a serious dispute in 1878, Thomas decided to retire to Thorncroft, the large house which he had built on the outskirts of Leicester, and allow John Cook to run the business on his own.

And A Sad Ending

Cook led a lonely life after the deaths of his unmarried daughter Annie in 1880 and his wife four years later. He continued to travel, however, making his final pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1888. Much of his time and money were spent, as they had been throughout his career, in work for the Baptist church, the temperance movement, and other charities. He did not attend the firm's silver jubilee celebrations in 1891; whether this was because of blindness and physical incapacity or because  his son John did not want him there is not clear

Thomas Cook died at Knighton, Leicester, on 18th July 1892.

Eight quirky museums around the world

Park your normal views of what constitutes a good museum.  If you really want to understand human culture, then as well as the Tate and the Louvre and the Museo del Prado there’s also the Spam Museum in Minnesota or the Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia.  Here are eight of the strangest..

DEUTSCHES CURRYWURST MUSEUM (BERLIN, GERMANY)

At one of the quirkiest museums in Berlin, the currywurst is elevated to an art form. The museum includes a replica of the kitchen where the dish – which is a bratwurst on a bun topped with a mix of ketchup and curry powder – was created, a comprehensive map of all the currywurst shops in the city, and of course a gift shop full of currywurst merchandise.

RAMONES MUSEUM (BERLIN, GERMANY)

Another Berlin museum, this one is dedicated to the Ramones. Created by a fan of the band, the museum traces their history and showcases memorabilia and photos from throughout their career. The museum also hosts live music shows.

LEILA’S HAIR MUSEUM (INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI)

Not surprisingly proclaiming itself to be the only hair museum in the world, Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri displays everything from jewellery made of hair to hair wreaths and photos “painted” with pulverized hair mixed with dyes. Locks of hair from famous people throughout history, including Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe, are also exhibited.

PHALLOLOGICAL MUSEUM (REYKJAVIK, ICELAND)

Ok, so you want to know what the penis of a whale looks like?  Now you can find out at the Phallological Museum in Iceland. Formerly housed in the small northern town of Husavik, the museum recently moved to Reykjavik, where it displays more than 200 penis specimens mounted on the walls and encased in glass jars.

And, you can sign up to make your own contribution to the collection after your death.

THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS (ZAGREB, CROATIA)

In Zagreb’s Museum of Broken Relationships, you can relive breakups that are at times both heart-breaking and hilarious. Here the most mundane of objects are each displayed alongside sad stories of love lost. Many of the stories are quite moving; take a hankie!

SPAM MUSEUM (AUSTIN, MINNESOTA)

My personal favourite.  And as lovers of Spam and Monty Python would say, Spam, Spam, Spam!   At the Austin, Minnesota, store and museum, you can watch a short video on the history of SPAM, learn about the role Spam played in World War II, practice on a mock assembly line, and fill up on samples of the more than dozen varieties currently in production. Bloody Vikings!

BRITISH LAWNMOWER MUSEUM

Many people say my Lawnmower is an antique and should be in a museum. Well here it is,  The British Lawnmower Museum, which is also a shop, displays some of the first lawnmowers ever made, some of the most expensive mowing machines, and some of the fastest lawnmowers used throughout the years. While a visit sounds about as exciting as watching grass grow, there are those that will find this wonderful.

MUSEUM OF TOILETS (INDIA)

India’s Museum of Toilets actually has a greater purpose – to raise awareness of the health issues caused by improper sanitation, but it does displays toilets ranging from some of the earlier loos to the “thrones” used by royalty.

If anyone has any other quirky museums, please me know!

See the original article here

Es ist einer Wunderbar Welt!

So what's going on this Christmas at Thomas Cook?  The Germans are coming..

On the one hand,  Mike Hoban, Thomas Cook UK & Ireland’s new marketing director, says their 'turn-of-the-year campaign will be launching on Christmas Day' and it will be their 'biggest push for some time including TV, radio, online and press advertising'..

But, on the other hand, I also see that Thomas Cook's post-Christmas ad plans have been ditched, without a replacement lined up...??

It seems the ongoing shake-up in senior management has hit their 'biggest marketing push' 

Thomas Cook was expected to roll out the next iteration of its brand campaign using the strapline 'It's a wonderful world, explore it with us', which broke in March.

However, it's understood that those plans were abandoned following the arrival of Mike Hoban in September as director of marketing, brands and customer insight.

Following the appointment of Peter Fankhauser as its UK chief executive last month, TC may now 're-purpose' a TV ad created for the German market to ensure that it does not miss out on crucial bookings in the weeks after Christmas.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook said: 'We're excited about our plans for the important peak booking period, [but] naturally the detail is commercially sensitive. We are considering all options open to us - as you would expect when a new marketing director joins - but Thomas Cook will be on air.'

By the way...arch-rival TUI is expected to launch multimillion-pound campaigns next month for its Thomson and First Choice brands. In September, Thomson rolled out a £5.5m campaign promoting its new Dreamliner aircraft...

India - Powerhouse Economy for Growth

This is one of the World Travel Market breakout sessions on powerhouse economies, in this case, India.

The session was run by the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) and this panel  discusses outbound tourism, more specifically the huge potential for outbound tourism and the problems facing Europe in trying to attract some of that business.   

And, of course, it's that old nutshell again...visas.

New Exhibitors for WTM 2012

The World Travel Market is welcoming 157 new exhibitors at the event for WTM 2012 with some new interesting names (but sadly not Molvania just yet....)

Europe leads the way in new exhibitors with 41 exhibitors appearing for the first time as Main Stand Holders. They include tourism boards and offices as far apart as San Marino, Lille and Belarus as well as the Republic of Komi, in North Western Russia.

The Technology and Online Travel region has 36 technology companies taking their own stands from a wide range of disciplines including names such as Travel Republic and Online Travel Training. 

Software firms are represented by Hotelogix and Intuitive, while the rise of social media and mobile is reflected in the appearance of specialists in this area such as Revinate and Voiamo Group. Other suppliers exhibiting for the first time include Worldpay and technology services company Wizie.

The Global Village region sees 18 new exhibitors from all parts of the industry including the K+K hotels chain, wholesaler Adonis, Autorent Car Rental and Chic Outlet Shopping in Europe.

Asia has 13 first-time exhibitors (reflecting the growth in China’s travel industry) including China Southern Airlines and newer destinations such as Vietnam, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, represented by Victoria Vietnam Group, Saigontourist, Uzbektourism and the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators.

India has its own dedicated stand-alone region with 12 new exhibitors including Brys Hotels, Inbound Tour Operator Council (ITOC), West Bengal, hotel company ITC Limited and Odisha Tourism.

The UK has 12 new exhibitors including English Heritage (for the first time??) and the National Trust, plus London attractions The View From the Shard and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.

A further ten new exhibitors will attend the show in the Africa region highlighting a continued development  in African tourism, as Africa emerges from last year’s Arab Spring. Notably these include the Libyan Export Promotion Center and Airkenya Express.