Thomson Holidays: a brief history

THOMSON Holidays is a UK based travel operator and part of TUI AG.
The company was founded as part of the Thomson Travel Group in 1965 following the acquisition of three package holiday travel agencies and the airline Britannia Airways by Roy Thomson. After the intense price-cutting rivalries of the early 1970s, Thomson restructured the company and in 1972 acquired Lunn Poly, the largest chain of travel agents in the United Kingdom. The name Lunn Poly was kept until 2004, when TUI UK rebranded as Thomson Holidays in order to create a “powerbrand” company and insisted that there were no plans to rebrand Lunn Poly. Thomson Travel Group was floated on the London Stock Exchange in May 1998 with a valuation of 1.7 billion pounds. In 2000 TTG was acquired by Preussag AG, an industrial and transportation company. Preussag was renamed TUI AG on July 1, 2002 and Thomson Travel became TUI UK. Thomson Holidays and Britannia Airways (rebranded Thomsonfly) are now subsidiaries of that group.