Club 18-30: Sun sets on booze-fuelled party holidays as millennials look for social media friendly trips
Club 18-30, the travel brand promising sun, sea and sex to teenagers going abroad without their parents for the first time, will close down at the end of the month after losing ground with millennials.
Thomas Cook, which bought Club 18-30 in 1998, decided to end the brand after failing to sell it over the summer.
“We are increasingly focused on our core own-brand hotel portfolio and feel that the Club 18-30 brand no longer fits in with our wider programme,” said Ingo Burmester, Thomas Cook’s UK boss.
“Having taken the summer to explore our options we have, in the absence of a viable alternative that makes sense for Thomas Cook or the brand, decided that Club 18-30 will close at the end of this season.”
At its peak over 100,000 people travelled to Ayia Napa, Magaluf or Malia with Club 18-30 each year. Now the brand’s last plane full of revellers will leave Britain on for Mallorca on 27 October.
This summer 45,000 holidays were organised through the brand.
The fall of the brand, which was at one point synonymous with party holidays, has been in part fuelled by social media conscious millennials not wanting to be pictured drunk online.
The company launched its new brand Cook’s Club earlier this year to target a trendy and young clientele.
It is, Thomas Cook says, “a new generation of hotels for a new generation of travellers” catering to special diets and promising “good music, great drinks and fantastic food.”
The group’s shares dropped by a quarter after it slashed profit forecasts as Brits stayed at home to enjoy the hot summer.