September 12th - First Choice is back – kind of
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the most familiar names in travel over the turn of the century is back – with a very different proposition.
First Choice offers flight-free travel and backpacking experiences including camping and hostels stays, in an attempt to lure younger travellers who currently are more likely to put together trips independently.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Tuesday the 12th of September. |
| 0:10.9 | One of the great joys of having been kicking around in travel for rather too long is that you get to see things coming back. |
| 0:21.6 | And so it has proved this morning. |
| 0:23.8 | At 8am, Tuey, which is one of the biggest travel companies in Europe, |
| 0:30.8 | announced that it was bringing back first choice. |
| 0:35.6 | Now, who you might well be thinking, if you're a person of very young persuasion, who |
| 0:41.4 | a first choice? |
| 0:43.0 | Well, let me take you back to 1994 when travel and in particular mainstream package |
| 0:52.3 | holiday travel was just vast. There were four big companies. |
| 1:00.1 | There was Thompson, which is now effectively Tui. There was air tours, a fantastic Northern |
| 1:08.0 | England challenger. Thomas Cook, of course, had been in the game for literally centuries. |
| 1:15.1 | And then there was this sort of conglomeration of various bits and pieces of holiday companies |
| 1:20.3 | called Owners Abroad, Not Very Catchy. |
| 1:23.8 | So, amid great Rasmataz, first choice was born. And actually, it proved pretty successful. |
| 1:34.4 | For the 13 years in which it was an independent company, well, it was delivering great value. |
| 1:42.3 | It had all the stuff that you would imagine. |
| 1:44.6 | It had high street travel agents. |
| 1:46.8 | It had a fleet of aircraft. |
| 1:49.2 | In fact, its own airline was called Air 2000, |
| 1:53.1 | until, of course, the year 2000, |
| 1:55.1 | when they had to come up with a new name. |
| 1:57.8 | And it offered very good value package holidays in intense competition against Thompson, |
... |
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