{"id":10069,"date":"2022-04-29T07:30:41","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T07:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=10069"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:41:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:41:36","slug":"when-was-the-first-package-holiday-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/when-was-the-first-package-holiday-to-china\/","title":{"rendered":"When was the first package holiday to China?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the most astonishing news in the global travel industry in 1977 was the announcement by Thomson Holidays that they were launching package trips to China, writes Paul French<\/strong>. The story of how it came about is just as surprising. This is just one of the many key events that have taken place during the 50 years since the establishment of ambassadorial relations between China and the UK<\/h2>\n

Thomson\u2019s all-inclusive tours, which included visits to Peking (as it was still referred to then), Shanghai and, intriguingly, \u2018assorted communes\u2019, were the first package holidays to China by a major British travel agency.\u00a0 How the deal to operate the tours came about is an incredible story of British business determination.<\/p>\n

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Thomson Holidays, founded by Roy Thomson (later Lord Thomson of Fleet), a Canadian newspaper mogul, had been determinedly pushing East for a while. Already in the brochure were holidays to Moscow and Leningrad in 1972, followed by Mongolia and Siberia a couple of years later.<\/p>\n

Thomsons\u2019 package holidays director, Philip Morrell, wanted to start tours to China. He knew Lord Thomson had visited China in 1972 and met Premier Zhou Enlai, and so asked his boss for an introduction. But Thomson wasn\u2019t interested in China at the time, instead concentrating his efforts on expanding his newspaper empire. Morrell decided to go ahead anyway and found a friendly Chinese chef in London\u2019s Chinatown who wrote a letter to the Premier of China on his behalf requesting permission and dropping Thomson\u2019s name. Amazingly, Zhou received the letter, replied and agreed, though all negotiations had to go through the Chinese Embassy in Bucharest. Morrell also reached a deal with TAROM, the Romanian airline, that had a weekly service from Bucharest to Peking, and the Thomson package holiday to China was born.<\/p>\n