Flight To The Sun

The story of Vladimir Raitz is the story of the package tour. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the very first modern package holiday, this fascinating book recounts the development of one of the twentieth century's defining social phenomena. Starting with a brief overview of tourism up until the Second World War, Flight to the Sun goes on to tell how, after the war, a handful of entrepreneurs -- of whom Vladimir Raitz was the first and most ambitious -- used old warplanes to take British vacationers to exotic European beaches.

This fascinating story is told from two perspectives. Raitz's chapters tell the story, full of vivid characters and sparkling anecdotes of how he developed his own company, Horizon Holidays, into a hugely successful organization. Bray's chapters trace the history of the industry as a whole, in tandem with the trail being blazed by Horizon. The two narratives combine to present an authoritative and vivid account of how the tourism industry was transformed from a plaything of the rich into a highly regulated service for the masses.