The collapse of Thomas Cook has left the tourism sector a bit shocked and while the English tour operator has ceased its operations immediately, hundreds of thousands of tourists are left with unanswered questions and an overall feeling of no-control over their own holiday plans.

Nothing new though…. that’s what tour operators do. They ask us to hand them all control in exchange of lower rates but what they don’t tell us is far more important than what they promise.

You see, tour operators are founded to optimize the money they make, not the quality of their service or the happiness of their clients. Tour operators choose a few sites and operate their whole machinery to squeeze every tiny bit of income they can from that site. They flood one city, or in fact, one hotel with as many tourists as they possibly can with fake ads and misleading offers. They show us pristine beaches and spacious hotels in their brochures only to discover ourselves that they happened to promise the exact same thing to other 600 people in the exact same week for the exact same price. They bend the rules to the extent of overselling their packages knowing that it is more profitable for them even if they have to re-accommodate and compensate a percentage of their clients. All in all, they treat clients like a commodity.

It is sad to know that thousands of people have lost their jobs over the night and it is hard to imagine the unfair conditions that a giant corporation will eventually negotiate with unions and governments to compensate for their own mess. However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

The chaos created by Thomas Cook’s bankruptcy is the result, in part, of people waking up and realising that they want to be back in control of their holidays. Mobile apps and hundreds of websites across the Internet have never offered such a big amount of possibilities for travellers to plan their own trips. We live in an era of endless possibilities where the difficulty lies not in “planning” but in “choosing” and the upcoming generations do not feel comfortable when others choose for them. People want DIY projects and they want to be in control of where they go, how much they pay and what they’ll do.

We, at Your Way To Travel, want to offer a service tailored to the needs of each of our clients. We believe in downscaling the economy to escale our happiness. We advocate for a more diverse way of travelling. We support the idea of shoulder-season travelling, boutique hotels and sustainable tourism. We offer a different perspective on how the jurassic tour-operation industry works. One where you experience the place you visit rather than quickly scan through its highlights. One where you taste the local food, listen to local music and mingle with local people rather than staying in an all-inclusive resort eating the same food, listening to the same music and talking to your neighbour because she saw the same ad and purchased the exact same holiday deal as you did.

And if you think that sustainable tourism and proper travelling (one where you don’t have to rush from monument to monument) is more expensive, brings more headaches and takes considerably much more resources than just purchasing a fixed-no-changes-package, we’d ask you to let us prove it otherwise. Let us take care of you and we’ll prove that you can have the best of both worlds. You can choose how much to spend, where to go and have a unique and bespoke holiday made exactly and only for you. You don’t have to pay top dollar for it, you just have to want a better holiday.