Lunn Poly - Horizon - Air 2000

History of Lunn Poly, Horizon & Air 2000

As one of the UK's leading travel agents, Lunn Poly had in excess of 800 travel agencies throughout Britian. Employing around 6,000 people, the Lunn Poly travel shops helped many millions of people to book their holidays. Alas times change and after more than 100 years on the high street its parent company, TUI decided it was time to make strategic changes to its entire business and embark on a major rebranding exercise to capitalise on the strength of TUI's Thomson brand. In January 2005 all the Lunn Poly holiday shops were subsequently rebranded as Thomson Travel Agents. The other casualty of the rebranding was the disappearance of the much loved Britannia Airways, which was also rebranded as Thomson Flights, then as ThomsonFly.

ThomsonFly was then later changed with the merger of TUI UK and First Choice Holidays to become Thomson Airways.

The Lunn Poly name may have gone, but they are still battling away on the high streets of Britain as Thomson!

The driving force behind the changes was to demonstrate that the company, who makes your booking, flies you out to your resort and provides you with your holiday are all the same. Previously many people were unaware that Lunn Poly, Britannia Airways and Thomson Holidays were all the same company, so it made sense to unify the branding, with Thomson being the strongest of the brands.

This strength in brand awareness was vital to meet the changing ways that people now book their holidays, with the internet playing a pivotal role in the new world order of booking your holiday. Before the branding changes, the sales of package holidays had been flat during 2004, while greater awareness of the internet for people to book their holidays direct had put pressure on many High Street travel agents.

The Lunn Poly brand was a well established name that can be traced back to 1888. In 1888 Poly Tours was formed to provide cheap holidays abroad for students at London's Regent Street Polytechnic. In 1893 a rival holiday company was founded by Sir Henry Lunn. The Poly and Lunn groups merged in 1965. On the 9th December 2004, the Lunn Poly website was switched off and now links you to the Thomson website where you will see all the holidays that Thomson currently have available, many with online discounts.