Thomas Cook has announced the sun will finally set on Club 18-30 later this month after failing to find a buyer for the pioneering youth holiday brand.
Club 18-30 was founded in the early 1970s and was built on a business model of selling young singletons and couples cheap package deals to the costas.
Cook acquired the brand when it bought up its then parent, the short-lived Flying Colours airline, in 1998.
MORE: Cook’s Club ’categorically not’ a replacement for Club 18-30
However, Cook placed Club 18-30 “under review” in May, with chief executive Peter Fankhauser intimating another operator or shareholder may be “better placed” to develop the brand.
And at the weekend, Cook’s chief of UK source market Ingo Burmester said Club 18-30 would close at the end of the summer season, understood to be October 27.
“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 Burmester in a statement.
“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 Club 18-30 will close at the end of this season.”
Addressing delegates at the Hays Travel Independence Group conference on Saturday, where Cook was headline sponsor, trade partnership manager Katrina Latimer said Cook’s new “millennial-focused” hotel brand Cook’s Club was not designed to be a replacement for Club 18-30.
The last Club 18-30 trip - to Magaluf in Majorca - will depart Manchester later this month.