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Traditionally, and until the 1990s, the tour operator was a wholesaler that packaged travel products like flight seats and hotel rooms to be sold through the travel agency retailer. The tour operator was the intermediary between airlines, hotels and other producers and the travel agencies that sold the travel products to the consumers.⁵⁵ Being of less significance in the US, the tour operator was an important part of the West European tourism industry. As a result the global tour operator industry was concentrated in Western Europe. Radical changes in tourism since the 1990s have reduced the importance of tour operators, but still in the 2000s they operate one-third of all long European vacations. Since the 1990s, the tour-operating or package-tour industry is continuously being consolidated.⁵⁶

The total European tour-operator market in 2005 amounted to some $80 billion, embracing at least half the world tour-operator market.⁵⁷ In Western Europe, there are about 150000 tour operators and travel agencies, probably one-third of world total. Most of the European travel market is consolidated in a few large tour operators that also control most travel agencies. The top 8 tour operators control two-thirds of the market (Figure 11). In 2007, TUI and Thomas Cook merged with First Choice and My Travel respectively, consolidating their position as the world’s two leading tour operators.

FIGURE 11 Europe’s Top Eight Tour Operators’ Revenues in $bn, 2007

Source: Annual reports.