The Man Who Invented Holidays

The importance of being "high-agency"

The original intention for creating this substack was to follow up on and explore things I realised I didn't know.

I recently came across a great example of this, and following up on the question led me to discover perhaps one of the highest agency people in history.

The importance of high agency people and cultivating high agency has grown on my radar recently, partly thanks to spending time listening to and reading stuff by George Mack.

George suggests that being high agency is arguably the most essential character trait you can foster, and the below Twitter thread from 2018 gives some definitions and examples of high agency folk:

https://twitter.com/george__mack/status/1068238562443841538?lang=en

My favourite definition sits within the question, "If you were stuck in a third-world prison and you could call one person to help bust you out, who would you call?"

Being high agency means getting shit done. But more than that, it means bending the world to your will.

Creating something that literally didn't exist before you is a pretty good example of a high agency act.

Recently, whilst on holiday, my fiancee asked me - where do you think the concept of a holiday came from? Who decided they needed to take a break from their own lifestyle and travel elsewhere temporarily to sample someone else’s?

Obviously, I didn’t know, but I did not expect the answer to stem from one individual.

One individual with a very recognisable name.

In ancient cultures (think Romans/Greeks), travel abroad was primarily for trade or military purposes. The very wealthy occasionally travelled for health (i.e. visiting a spa).

This was largely unchanged until the "Grand Tour" concept emerged in the 17th-19th Centuries. A Grand Tour was a long trip, often through several countries, taken by the upper-class youth of Europe to finalise their education.

After the industrial revolution, travel became more common. Increased wealth, leisure time, and the development of railroads and the steam engine meant that travelling was more accessible and affordable.

However, it wasn't until a Mr. Thomas Cook (born 1808) came along that the idea of a holiday really took off.

Thomas Cook is credited with being the pioneer of modern tourism. He transformed the way people travelled, making it more accessible and affordable for the general public and not just the wealthy elites.

In 1841, Mr. Cook organised the first holiday.

OK, really, it was a rail journey for a group of campaigners travelling to a temperance meeting in Loughborough.

He arranged for the rail company to provide a special train, charging one shilling per person for the round trip.

But it started something. Mr Cook later wrote of the journey: "And thus was struck the keynote of my excursions, and the social idea grew upon me."

Building on the success of his initial venture, Cook began organising trips to other destinations. These trips extended beyond just temperance society members and expanded to offerings for the general public. He arranged transport, meals, and accommodation, effectively creating the first package tours.

For the next 33 years, he shuttled tourists up, down and around the country.

He then started taking passengers across the Channel into Switzerland, Italy and France, introducing thousands of people to the Swiss Alps, the Colosseum and the joys of freshly baked croissants.

Later, he shipped travellers to Japan, India, and the USA. He even offered a 222-day world tour, which he named 'China via Egypt'.

Beyond just the trips themselves, Thomas Cook also pioneered several innovations that laid the groundwork for modern tourism. He introduced the concept of 'circular notes', which later became traveller's cheques - making it easier for individuals to manage money abroad. He also produced travel guides and timetables, contributing to the tourism infrastructure that still exists today.

It is important to remember that whilst Thomas Cook did not invent the idea of travelling, before him, there was no concept of a package holiday. There was no way for an individual to book a trip that included the travel, the accommodation and the activities whilst there.

Travelling abroad would have been a BIG deal for many people in the 1800s, so providing a way to address these fears was no mean feat.

For his early international tours, Thomas himself coordinated with various transport companies, arranged accommodations, and planned excursions. He often accompanied the tours himself, making sure that the tours ran smoothly.

They didn't always.

On one trip in the summer of 1870, he and a group were in Paris. The political situation in Europe was tense, and whilst they were there, the Franco-Prussian war broke out.

Negotiating with travel companies is a challenging thing to do even today. But doing so in a time of no internet, whilst a country descends into war, will require serious high agency action.

Of course, he manages it.

The story of Thomas Cook reminds me somewhat of the famous one about Richard Branson and the inception of Virgin Airways.

Frustrated by a cancelled flight to the Virgin Islands, Richard charters a plane, borrows a blackboard and writes "Virgin Airways, $39 one way to the Virgin Islands" to sell seats to other stranded passengers.

The flight fills, and the rest is history.

The rest is history.

This phrase is a common one to mark the end of the beginning of a well-known story - often involving a high agency individual or group of individuals.

High agency individuals like Richard Branson and Thomas Cook write history.

We can't all write history, and we can't all invent airlines from scratch.

But maybe we can all seek to be a little more high agency. Being high agency seems to be a pretty damn good barometer for whether someone is likely to be successful or not.

Sometimes, the best way to become more of something is to think about the perils of being the opposite.

As George defines - "low agency people accept the story that is given to them. They never question it. They are passive."

That doesn’t sound like something any of us would aspire to be.

Nothing that Thomas Cook did was technically challenging, complicated or anything that required any level of superhuman intelligence. As well as being a fascinating story it’s an inspiring one about high agency, and simply the act of getting shit done changing the world as we know it.

So if in doubt, what would Thomas Cook do?