In 1758,
Cox & Kings became the first travel agency in modern history. In 1840, the
Abreu Agency was established in Porto by Bernardo Abreu, becoming the world's first agency to open its services to the public. In 1841,
Thomas Cook, a
Baptist preacher who believed that alcohol was to blame for social problems, reached an agreement with the
Midland Railway to organize the transportation of 500 members of his
temperance movement from the
Leicester Campbell Street railway station to a rally in
Loughborough in exchange for a commission. He formed
Thomas Cook & Son, which later became
The Thomas Cook Group. It filed
bankruptcy and underwent
liquidation in 2019. In 1871,
Dean and Dawson was founded in the United Kingdom and in the 1950s, it was acquired by Thomas Cook. In 1870, the
Polytechnic Touring Association was founded in the United Kingdom. In 1887, Walter T. Brownell established Brownell Travel, the first travel agency in the United States, and led 10 travelers on a European tour setting sail from New York on the SS
Devonia. In 1895, Baldwins Travel was founded by Alfred K Baldwin, originally a printer, bookbinder and publisher in Tunbridge Wells. Baldwins begins selling railway tickets and helping friends to travel to Europe and beyond. News spreads and the former printers slowly build a strong side-line in travel at the back of the Baldwins Stationery shop at 27 Grosvenor Road. In 1905, Nippon Travel Agency became the first travel agency in
Japan. Originally, travel agencies largely catered to middle and upper-class customers but they became more commonplace with the development of
commercial aviation. In 1923, after being treated badly by a British travel agency,
K. P. Chen formed what became the
China Travel Service, the first travel agency in
China. The industry suffered during
World War II. However, the
Post–World War II economic expansion in mass-market
package tours resulted in the proliferation of travel agencies catering to the
working class. In 1929,
Intourist was formed as the official state travel agency of the
Soviet Union, with the goal of convincing outsiders to visit the country. In 1931, the US trade organization ASTA (originally the American Steamship and Tourist Agents Association, now the American Society of Travel Advisors) was created. During the
Cold War, travel agents were used by people from Western countries to travel behind the
Iron Curtain. In the early Cold War period, new intergovernmental programmes helped organise and subsidise long-distance migration from Europe, including the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME), renamed the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). In some countries, travel and migration agencies viewed these programmes as both competition and a source of new business opportunities, as the administration of passports, consular procedures, medical checks, and transport became more bureaucratised and commercially mediated. In 1951, the precursor to
Helloworld Travel became one of the first travel agencies in
Australia. In 1955, Henderson Travel Service in
Atlanta, Georgia became the first African-American-owned travel company and the first to take large groups of black American tourists to Africa. advertisement from
Rhodes in 1971. In the early 1980s,
American Airlines'
Sabre unit created a direct-to-consumer booking tool for flights, hotels and cars called eAAsySabre. In 1989, with the liberalization of travel for
South Koreans, Mode Tour became the first travel agency in the country. In 1991, Hotel Reservations Network, the precursor of
Hotels.com, was founded. At first, hotels did not pay much in commissions. In 1994, Travelweb.com launched as the first online directory of hotels. In 1995, Internet Travel Network sold the first airline ticket via the World Wide Web. Also in 1999, European airlines began eliminating or reducing commissions, while
Singapore Airlines did so in parts of
Asia. In 2002, several airlines in the United States did the same, which led to an unsuccessful lawsuit alleging collusion among the airlines, that was decided on appeal in 2009. In 2007, the launch of the
iPhone and related
mobile apps increased travel bookings made online. Inc & Co. ==Outlook==