My life in Tourism began in the mid-eighties when I worked for Butlins holiday hotels as a Redcoat. My experience there led me to start work overseas here in Mallorca in 1990. I was a Holiday Rep for Intasun Holidays, working at the Guadalupe Hotel for my first season. At that time, there were loads of UK Tour Operators. Intasun were under the ILG banner which also included Global, Lancaster, Club 1830, Sol Holidays and the airline Air Europe. Their main rival was Thomson, who had Skytours, Horizon and their own airline called Brittania. There are lots of others too including, Cosmos, Owners Abroad (First Choice), Airtours and Thomas Cook.
Remember, all this was before the internet was invented, so people booked their holidays with a travel agent. Low-cost airlines weren’t around at that time, although interestingly a company called Skytrain took to the air for the first time on 26 September 1977 when their inaugural flight departed London Gatwick for New York JFK. This flight carried 272 passengers on one of the airline's 345-seat McDonnell Douglas DC-10 wide bodied aircraft. The fares charged at the time were £59 (equivalent to £463 in 2024) one-way from London and $135 (equivalent to £1,059 in 2024) one-way from New York. It makes we wonder why the owner Sir Freddie Laker decided to take on British Airways and the large American carriers at that time to fly long haul. When surely it would have been cheaper and more economical to fly short haul? He went bust five years later.
Ryanair had been in existence since 1984 but by the mid 1990s it had become a big player in the European low-cost market, they were followed In 1996 by EasyJet with their first European flights. Both of these airlines began to totally change the way we travel and giving people the opportunity to arrange their own holidays.
This then led to there being fewer Tour Operators, and they started to buy each other up. The biggest mergers were in 2007 when Thomas Cook partnered with My Travel and Tui partnered with First Choice. 2007 also saw the emergence of Jet2 Holidays who had mainly been a flight only and freight company before that.
Fast-forward to today, and the travel landscape is very different. The Leading ATOL-licensed tour operators in the United Kingdom as of February 2024, ranked by number of passengers licensed, with figures from Statista are;
- Jet2 Holidays
- TUI UK
- Love Holidays
- Booking.com
- EasyJet Holidays
With all the consolidation in the holiday market there is one name that’s missing in that Tour Operating top five. Ryanair have so far resisted the temptation to delve into the package holiday market. Interestingly, though, in January this year they agreed a new partnership with Love Holidays for its customers who wish to book low-cost package holidays. This deal allows Love Holidays customers to buy Ryanair flights, seats, and bags as part of their love holidays package at Ryanair's low prices.
Don’t be surprised to see Ryanair take that partnership further by buying Love Holidays or another online travel agent and launching Ryanair Holidays. It seems the natural way forward and having seen what EasyJet have done, I’m sure they won’t be far behind.