History
The company began as Excel Airways Group. It was bought by the Icelandic Avion Group in November 2004, previously being owned by the Icelandic Flugfelagid Atlanta HF. It bought Kosmar Village Holidays in May 2006. In October 2006, there was a $450m management buyout of the company, although the Avion Group retained 49% of the company. It became XL Leisure Group on 22 December 2006. The French subsidiary used to be Star Airlines and the German subsidiary was called Star Europe. At its height, it flew from 12 UK airports. The Irish airline began in May 2006.
The Group also included Kosmar Villa Holidays, which was a British holiday company specialising in holidays to Greece and Turkey. It was founded by Kostas Markou in 1981, taking holidaymakers to his home-town of Tolon, Peloponese. Kosmar continued to travel to Tolon, but its programme also grew to feature a large number of destinations across the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The company was acquired by the XL Leisure Group, and used XL Airways UK, Astraeus Airlines and Air Malta for its flights. On flights to Crete and Rhodes, Kosmar gave the option to fly with British Airways. On 10 April 2006, Excel Airways, representing the Avion Group, purchased Kosmar Villa Holidays plc for an undisclosed sum. The founder Kostas Markou stayed with the company.
In early June 2007, Kosmar removed Bulgaria, Majorca, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Tenerife and The Algarve from its website. It was thought that Kosmar was to revert back to being a specialist to more 'exotic' destinations.
Read more about this topic: XL Leisure Group
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)