Touropa
Touropa ( original spelling : TOUROPA ) was a tourism company founded in Munich in 1951 , which in the following years gained great importance in the corporate travel segment. From 1974 to 2014 it was only run as a brand .
history
The original company, based in Munich, was founded in 1948 by Carl Degener , Emil Kipfmüller from Hapag-Lloyd , Karl Fuss from the Official Bavarian Travel Agency (ABR) and F. B. Käppler from the German Travel Agency as a working group for social travel . In 1951, following restructuring measures, the company was renamed Touropa. The company's aim was to offer affordable vacation trips for the so-called average consumer. In the same year vacationers were able to travel to Austria , Italy and Switzerland , in 1953 vacation trips to Yugoslavia and tours in Spain were possible. Together with the Baedeker publishing house, small travel guides were published for individual travel areas.
During this time, the train was the main means of travel for vacationers. Degener worked closely with what was then the Federal Railroad ; one result of the joint work was the development of the couchette car . Continuous further developments in technology and transport later made it possible to travel to Mallorca , East Africa or Algeria by ship or plane.
Another innovation from Degener was the vacation booking based on the modular principle, i.e. the travel combination of cruise, beach vacation and round trip. In the 1970s, Touropa was the first major tour operator to offer its customers the option of nudist trips.
In 1968 Touropa was one of the founding companies of Touristik Union International, a forerunner of TUI AG. The founding companies only merged the management of the companies involved in 1974. After that, TOUROPA was only continued as a brand.
Since 2004, the Touropa brand name has been run by touropa.com , a joint venture between TUI AG and Munich entrepreneur Georg Eisenreich. The brand was later managed by Touropa Touristik GmbH & Co. KG, which was represented solely by the managing director Jan-Peter Knaak.
On July 14, 2014, it was reported that this tour operator was in financial difficulties and had closed all communication channels. On July 17, 2014, the Erfurt-based company Aviation Travel Service (ATS) announced that it had taken over the tourism and service areas of Touropa and that it will continue to operate under its own brand ATS Blue .
Trivia
This brand can also be seen in older German feature films. It appears z. B. in the film Emil and the detectives from 1954 on the trains of the Deutsche Bundesbahn.
Web links
- A brand name gives impetus: Touropa has always stood for innovation ( Memento from January 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Christopher Kopper : The journey as a commodity. The importance of package tours for West German mass tourism after 1945 , in: Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History, online edition , 4 (2007) H. 1 + 2, last accessed on April 12, 2009
- blog.touropa.com: Touropa trains picture gallery ( Memento from November 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Touropa probably in turbulence, report on touristik-aktuell.de ( memento of the original from August 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. July 14, 2014, accessed July 15, 2014.
- ↑ New start: ATS takes over Touropa business , accessed on February 26, 2017
