Lunn Poly was, at one time, the largest chain of

travel agent A travel agency is a private retailer or public service that provides travel and tourism-related services to the general public on behalf of accommodation or travel suppliers to offer different kinds of travelling packages for each destinatio ...

s in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

History

The company originated from two successful travel agencies established in the 1890s, the

Polytechnic Touring Association The Polytechnic Touring Association was a travel agency which emerged from the efforts of the Regent Street Polytechnic (now University of Westminster) to arrange UK and foreign holidays for students and members of that institution. The PTA beca ...

and Sir Henry Lunn Travel. Both firms were acquired in the 1950s by the

British Eagle British Eagle International Airlines was a major British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline that operated from 1948 until it went into liquidation in 1968. It operated scheduled and charter services on a domestic ...

airline group, and combined into Lunn Poly in 1965. It became a nationalised industry as part of the

Transport Holding Company The Transport Holding Company (THC) was a British Government-owned company created by the Transport Act 1962 to administer a range of state-owned transport, travel and engineering companies that were previously managed by the British Transport C ...

(THC). In June 1971, Sunair bought Lunn Poly from the THC for £175,000. In 1972, the company became part of

Thomson Travel Group Thomson Travel Group plc was a business formed by the Thomson Corporation of Canada, when it was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1998. It was acquired by Preussag AG, an industrial and transport conglomerate, in 2000. The group continu ...

. Lunn Poly became an early trade innovator, by splitting its leisure and business travel. High street shops concentrated on package holidays, specialized offices were structured to serve the needs of business and industry. This business model was highly successful throughout the 1970s and 1980s. By the mid-1990s it was the largest travel agency in the UK. When TUI UK, which had acquired Thomson Travel, rebranded

Britannia Airways Britannia Airways was a charter airline based in the UK. It was founded in 1961 as Euravia and became the world's largest holiday airline. Britannia's main bases were at London Gatwick, London Stansted, London Luton, Cardiff, Bristol, East Mi ...

Thomsonfly Thomsonfly was a British charter and scheduled airline. Thomsonfly was the first stage of TUI AG's plans to expand its business within TUI UK prior to September 2007. After TUI UK merged with First Choice Holidays in September 2007, it becam ...

in November 2003, the company insisted that there were no plans to rebrand Lunn Poly. On 2 November 2004, however, the announcement was made that all 800 Lunn Poly shops in the

were to be rebranded as Thomson. Lunn Poly was famous for a long running advertising campaign on

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

. These commercials featured people looking into what holidays the company offered. Another person would then say to them in disbelief "Lunn Poly? Get away!", at which point the person would disappear into thin air and end up at a vacation spot.

References

Travel and holiday companies of the United Kingdom Tourism in the United Kingdom {{leisure-company-stub