Fosun, which held an 18% stake in Cook when it collapsed just shy of a year ago, acquired the Cook brand last November.

The CAA has now granted London-headquartered Thomas Cook Tourism (UK) Company Limited an Atol for an initial 364 passengers.

The OTA’s operations look set to initially span the UK, Netherlands and Belgium, with three domain names affixed to the Atol – thomascook.com, thomascook.nl and thomascook.be.

The three websites feature a holding page, offering interested parties an email sign-up field for more information.

Destination guides, meanwhile, cover Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the US.

Sky News earlier this month reported the new Cook operation could launch in September.

Back in January, The Times reported Fosun – which was Cook’s largest shareholder when the iconic brand collapsed – had hired around “a dozen” for Cook executives to help rebuild the brand.

These are understood to include Alan French, Cook’s former group strategy and technology director; Raj Sharma, a former finance executive; and Phil Gardner, head of sales, e-commence and marketing.

Meanwhile, a group of former Cook staff last week revealed they were getting ready to launch a new online tour operator called Sunny Heart Travel – and sell through agents.

Chief executive Steve Bentzen, a former IT programme manager for Cook, said the operator could launch as early as this month “if the Covid situation improves”.

“We have come a long way since the collapse of Cook,” he said. “Sunny Heart was built from scratch, the name and logo are trademark registered and we have our own Atol.”

Sunny Heart is registered with the CAA to carry 1,000 Atol-protected passengers.