History
The group was founded under the Airtours brand in 1972, when David Crossland purchased a series of small travel agencies in Lancashire, United Kingdom. The group began operating package holidays and launched its own in-house charter airline, in the early 1980s.
During the 1990s, Airtours purchased Scandinavian Leisure Group (SLG) including award winning tour operators such as Ving and airline; Premiair.
In 2002, Airtours Group plc, re branded under the new company wide banner of MyTravel Group plc. This included a name change for Airtours International and Premiair to MyTravel Airways. Shops throughout Northern Europe were rebranded to MyTravel however UK retail outlets remained under the banner of Going Places due to the immense brand awareness and popularity - a brand that continually wins the accolade of ‘UK’s Favourite Travel Agent’ as voted for by Daily Mail readers. In November 2003, MyTravel sold off its North America Cruise Division to NLG (National Leisure Group) of Woburn, MA. The company ran into financial difficulties in 2004 and needed to implement a debt-for-equity swap in order to complete implementation of a group restructure.
In 2004 and 2005, MyTravel took 5.7 million people on holiday of which 3.4 million were from the UK, 1.5 million from Northern Europe and 0.8 million from North America.
On 12 February 2007, MyTravel Group plc announced that they had agreed terms on a merger with Thomas Cook AG. The merger was given shareholder approval at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 29 May 2007. The parent company of the enlarged group is named Thomas Cook Group plc with its headquarters in the UK and listed in London.
Read more about this topic: MyTravel Group
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