Father of modern tourism...............its mostly known as modern mass tourism or commercial tourism when commercial reasons behind tourism was seen.
tourism was always there as rich people visited many places,ofcourse they had money at their disposal,but masses always travelled for pilgrimage reasons esp to important religious places.

The father of modern mass tourism was Thomas Cook who, on July 5th 1841, organised the firstpackage tour in history, by chartering a train to take a group of teetotalers from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough, some twenty miles away. Cook immediately saw the potential for business development in the sector, and became the world's first tour operator.
Vladimir Raitz pioneered modern package tourism when on 20 May 1950 his recently founded company, Horizon, provided arrangements for a two-week holiday in Corsica. For an all inclusive price of 32.10s.-, holiday makers could sleep under canvas, sample local wines and eat a meal containing meat twice ...more