Thomas Cook, the Inventor of Tourism

The first tourist trip in history took 500 people by train from Leicester to Loughborough, a town located just 10.5 miles away. The first tourists, all supporters of Cook's temperance movement, paid a shilling each for the excursion, which they returned from on the same day. Cook revealed that he came up with the idea for the trip while walking through Leicester and thinking about how he could get people to the rally and contribute to such a noble cause.

Four years later, Thomas Cook organized a trip from Leicester to Liverpool, and the following year he took 350 residents of Leicester on a tour through Scotland, this time without the purpose of participating in anti-alcohol Baptist league rallies.

In 1851, Cook's company, Thomas Cook & Son, organized the trip for 150,000 people to the Great Exhibition in London, and four years later, he began the first tours through Belgium, Germany, and France, in connection with the 1855 Universal Exposition in Paris. In 1994, the city of Leicester erected a statue of Thomas Cook outside the Leicester train station, in honor of the great-grandson of the father of tourism.