Echelon & Associates
Since 1894
Our Journey
The Pioneers of Global Hotel Brands
Originally founded in 1910 in Delaware and headquartered in New York, through various merger and acquisitions of products originating from 1894 in the hotel property and intellectual property industry; the brand stable today draws its intellectual property assets from the pioneers in the global hotel asset business and rests in the United Arab Emirates on a new journey of global expansion from the epicentre of the world's most successful development city 'Dubai' following our inspirational global expansion partner as part of the 'Emirates Family'.
Our Holding Brands
Elegant Hospitality
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Echelon Brands
More than a Century of Experience
Group Holding Properties
Trusted Results
CREST
POSTHOUSE
HERITAGE
GRAND
Our Lineage
Elegant Hospitality
Echelon Premium Brands
A Global History
TRUSTHOUSE HOSPITALITY
EXCLUSIVE HOSPITALITY
Hotels & Resorts
Traditional Values
Our Project Participation Partners
Leading by Example
Bouygues
Ranked Number 10 Globally (2019)
GTO Euro 38Â billion
Operating in markets with potential for sustainable growth (construction, media and telecoms), the Group supports its customers over the long term.
Bouygues draws on the skills and expertise of its people to add value to the products and services it offers in each of its business segments.
The Group aims to strengthen its position as a global player in construction, energy, and transport infrastructure, maintain its leading position in the French media industry and support the spread of digital technologies in the telecoms sector for the benefit of customers and end-users alike.
Emirates Family
Synonymous with Global Expansion
Global holdings with interests in hospitality real estate assets, offshore contracting for oil and gas; remote and conflict zone support services; producers of national electrical generation and desalination and facility management surveillance with real time monitoring as designer and operators of global control centres.
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World Leaders in Air & Sea Transport and Freight Logistics
Leading Hotels
Luxury Hotels
The Hotel Collection
5 Star Premium Licensed Brands
Originally established in 1910, with operations dating back to 1894 by a group of forward-thinking Anglo-European hoteliers. The Group's original trading origins date back to traders from the Trucial States (Middle East under Colonial Rule) as far back as 1602 reaching into South East Asia.
The initial formal formation of commercial hotel properties was between Egypt, England and France under the "Nile and Luxor Hotel Companies" and subsequently New York, where on mass western tourists were introduced to the exotics of the orient.
Recognizing the growing importance and influence of global travel and linking the travel agencies of the North American market to Europe, the founders opened representative offices in the major sea port cities linking the Americas to the UK and Europe, also forging links via the Suez to Egypt, Mediterranean North Africa and the Colonies of South and Central Asia.
Later established under colonial seal as the “East West Travel & Trade, Inc.”
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By the 1970's, there were 200 plus hotels in the group, serviced through offices in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America.
During the 1990's, with IPOs, mergers, acquisitions and reverse takeovers the group was split up into all the major hotel chains in the world including, Inter-Continental, Holiday Inn, MacDonalds, Richardsons, Hilton, Four Seasons, Hyatt, Marriott, Sheraton and Accor just to name a few.
The Group today can trace its roots through almost every international chain of hotel properties. Prior to the split, the group was a collection of the world's greatest hotels and the largest integrated operation in the world collectively with over 800 properties in the portfolio across 80 countries.
Our Hospitality Partners
Old World Charm
The United States
of America
Collection Prive'
A North American collection of non-branded luxury retreats, hotels, resorts and country clubs, with a discrete clientele
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CREST RESORT
ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA
UNDER DEVELOPMENT
United Kingdom & Europe
The Country House Collection
Australia Asia Pacific &
Middle East North Africa
Residence Club Resorts
TRUSTHOUSE HOSPITALITY
EXCLUSIVE HOSPITALITY
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UNDER DEVELOPMENT
with Regional Franchisee
INDONESIA: 2 Locations
AUSTRALIA: 5 Locations
NEW ZEALAND: 1 Location
Investor Information
Since 1993 Echelon & Associates have been investing, merging and acquiring a collection of intellectual property assets in the hospitality real estate markets dating back as far as 1894.
We continue to find value in tradition, and old world charm from periods in history that modernity left behind.
Our goal is to continue our quest of building iconic historical brands and attaching beautiful real estate to those 'IP Assets' to ensure that the value chain is not just resurrected and maintained but enhanced through innovation and dedication to excellent service through elegant and understated brand recognition.
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Our key driver is to create a 'Quintessential Difference', flying in the face of over exposed modern branding techniques and hi-tech sales channels, instead opting for a long-term returning clientele that transcends generations.
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Regional 'Soft Brands' and 'Reservation Representation' as well as Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are available on a property to property basis, such examples may include third party licencing agreements with; Relais & Châteaux , Leading Hotels of The World, Luxury Group, Mr & Mrs Smith, Small Luxury Hotels and Abercrombie & Kent. (subject to individual applications and acceptance)
Plus other GDS options depending on property location and target markets, incorporating Amadeus, Galileo Travelport and Sabre.
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DUBAI: Freezone Head Office
Address: Creative City Fujairah
Creative Tower, Hamad Bin Abdulla Road
Fujairah, UAE
PO Box 147177
Dubai, UAE
Email: ir@echelon-ip-assets.com
The Alliance
Blog 1
The Birth of Modern Tourism
No. 1
Tourism and Empire: The Thomas Cook & Son Enterprise on the Nile, 1868-1914
F. ROBERT HUNTER
At its inception, tourism was a uniquely western phenomenon. A product of the industrial revolution, modem tourism was founded, developed, and perfected in Britain, western Europe, and North America during the second half of the nineteenth century.
The launching of Cook excursions in Britain ( 1841 ), the appearance of the first Baedeker guide ( 1843), the inauguration of a winte r 'season' in Saint Moritz (1864), the creation of Yellowstone (1877): these were important markers of its growth path.
As western influence spread throughout the globe in the nineteenth century, tourism became implanted in the colonized lands of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Tourists were part of the growing numbers of westerners - missionaries, teachers, traders, developers, bankers, messianic dreamers, and empire builders - who arrived each year in Jerusalem, Cairo, and other cities of the eastern Mediterranean.
The tourist enterprise accompanied British armies to Egypt and the Sudan in the 1880s and 1890s. Tourism was inseparable from the west's conquest of the Middle East.
Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Middle East was subjected to European economic penetration and political control.
Europeans in the Middle East extracted industrial raw materials, imported manufactured goods (mostly textiles), and purchased luxury items in demand in Britain, France, and elsewhere.
In Egypt, Tunisia, and Ottoman Turkey, Europeans lent money to local rulers, drove them into debt, and forced their governments into bankruptcy.
Enjoying immunities from local laws, European residents in Middle Eastern lands created incidents, put forward spurious claims for indemnification, and demanded the support of their diplomatic representatives.
European political control was established in Algeria (occupied by France in 1830), Aden (1839), Tunisia (French from 1881), Egypt (conquered by Britain in 1882), and the Sudan (1898).
Indirect rule by the foreign powers was imposed on Lebanon (1861), and fiscal controls were established in Ottoman Turkey (1881).
During and after the First World War, European control was extended to Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.
Transjordan was Middle Eastern Studies, Vo l.40, No.5, September 2004, pp.28-54
ISSN 0026 -3206 print/1743-7881 online
DOI: 10.1080/0026320042000265666 © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Blog 2
The New British Expedition
No. 2
The development of British tourism in Egypt, 1815 to 1850
Martin Anderson
Abstract
Tourism is one of Egypt's leading industries, yet there is no general historical narrative on how tourism developed in Egypt even though Egypt was one of the first locations tourism expanded to outside Europe.
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While the nature or experience of tourism has been well covered by anthropologists and social scientists, histories of tourism are rare.
This paper will provide a basic history of the development of tourism in Egypt from 1815 through 1850 and argues that Muhammad Ali's early welcome of European travellers in his attempt to develop and expand his power in Egypt provided the basis for the development of tourism.
Further, Britain's informal Mediterranean Empire after the Napoleonic Wars provided an umbrella of protection for British travellers to Egypt.
The overland route to India also sent large numbers of Britons through Egypt, each with time for tourism before travelling to India.
Nevertheless, tourism has its own structures which once established provided their own, mainly economic, mechanisms for continuity separate from imperial power.
From this historical narrative, it can be seen that tourism was established in Egypt well before the building of the Suez Canal and the first Thomas Cook tours in the 1860s, a more commonly held view.
‘Going out and doing something’: Victorian tourists in Egypt and the ‘tourist ethic’
Abstract
Through a reading of writings of three British travelers to Egypt in the late nineteenth century – Lucy Duff Gordon, Amelia Edwards, and Talbot Kelly – this article offers insights into the ongoing transformations within the practices of travel and tourism.
These writers left behind a record of the difficulties imposed on travelers by the expansion of tourism.
The ‘anti-tourism’ evident in Duff-Gordon and Edwards contrasts with Kelly who regarded tourists with pity.
While there is a large body of scholarship written in the twentieth century that identifies travel and the rise of tourism with the formation of a ‘leisure class’, Kelly's narrative reminds readers that the experience of tourists could be challenging.
In exploring the ‘tourist ethic’, Kelly reveals that when men and women journeyed down the Nile as tourists, they still brought with them the pressures of the industrial society.
In seeking to ‘go out and do something’ they came to Egypt and brought with them the need for leisure.
Scholars seeking to understand the emergence of tourism as an industry have often portrayed its expansion as unproblematic and nearly inevitable; these Victorians, however, reveal that there was much more ambivalence about these developments than has generally been recognized.
Blog 3
From Sea to Air
No. 3
Incidental tourism: British Imperial air travel in the 1930s
Gordon Pirie
Abstract
Few air travellers along Britain's Empire air routes in the 1930s were intentional holidaymakers.
Survey data and passenger profiles culled from other contemporary sources show that most commercial airline passengers flew on work assignment.
High fares deterred leisure travel by air, but air passengers flying long-distance on paid business or public service errands incidentally became tourists by virtue of the slow, low altitude, daylight flights that stopped frequently for refuelling: infant aeronautical technology and air travel economics created tourism of sorts along new routes.
Sightseeing from the air and on the ground was integral to Empire air journeys.
Unpredictability added to the adventure value of flying; the novelty of aerial views added to its scenic value.
Airline publicity, documentary films, and passenger accounts and diaries, stressed this in-flight and en-route experience: flying was a new way of seeing and experiencing foreign and historic places and landscapes, and for spotting game.
Flying was not just a way of reaching a destination.
Blog 4
Thomas Cook
No. 4
Thomas Cook & Son
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Cook & Son Thomas Cook logo, 1999
Former type Private company: 1841–1948, 1972–2001
Government-owned (British Transport Commission): 1948–72
Industry Hospitality, tourism
Fate: Acquired by C&N Touristic AG
Successor: Thomas Cook AG
Founded 5 July 1841; 178 years ago in Leicester, England [2]
Founder Thomas Cook
Defunct 2001[1]
Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
Area served: Worldwide
Thomas Cook & Son, originally simply Thomas Cook, was a company founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinet-maker, in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham.
- In 1851, Cook arranged transport to the Great Exhibition of 1851.
- He organised his first tours to Europe in 1855 and to the United States in 1866.
-In 1865, the founder's son John Mason Cook began working for the company full-time.
In 1871, he became a partner, and the name of the company was changed to Thomas Cook & Son.
-The company was nationalised along with the railways in 1948, becoming part of the British Transport Commission.
-After de-nationalisation in 1972, it was acquired by a consortium of Trust House, Midland Bank and the Automobile Association, then subsequently bought by Westdeutsche Landesbank in 1992.
-In 2001, it was acquired by the German company C&N Touristic AG, which changed its name to Thomas Cook AG.[1]
History
-One of the dahabeahs of Thomas Cook & Son, (Egypt) Ltd. Berlin: Cosmos art publishing Co., 1893. Brooklyn Museum Archives
-Thomas Cook & Son was founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinetmaker, in 1841 under the name "Thomas Cook" to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham.[3]
-In 1851, the founder arranged transport to the Great Exhibition of 1851.
-He organised his first tours to Europe in 1855 and to the United States in 1866.
-In 1865, the founder's son John Mason Cook began working for the company full-time.
-In 1871, he became a partner, and the name of the company was changed to Thomas Cook & Son.[4]
Thomas Cook had acquired business premises on Fleet Street, London, in 1865.[3]
-The office also contained a shop which sold travel accessories, including guide books, luggage, telescopes and footwear.
Thomas saw his venture as both religious and social service; his son provided the commercial expertise that allowed the company to expand.
In accordance with his beliefs, he and his wife also ran a small temperance hotel above the office.
-Their business model was refined by the introduction of the 'hotel coupon' in 1868. Detachable coupons in a counterfoil book were issued to the traveler.
-These were valid for either a restaurant meal or an overnight hotel stay, provided they were on Cook's list.[5]
-Panels from the Thomas Cook Building in Leicester, displaying excursions offered by Thomas Cook
-In 1866, the agency organised the first escorted tours of the United States for British travellers, picking up passengers from several departure points.
John Mason Cook led the excursion which included tours of several Civil War battlefields. In 1871, a brief but bitter partnership called Cook, Son and Jenkins was formed in the United States with an American businessman.[6]
-The first escorted round-the-world tour departed from London in September 1872.
-It included a steamship across the Atlantic, a stage coach across America, a paddle steamer to Japan, and an overland journey across China and India.[3]
-In 1873, publication of the quarterly (monthly from 1883) Cook's Continental Timetable began.
-It continues to be published in 2019, but no longer by Thomas Cook Publishing, which was wound up by its parent company in 2013; the timetable was relaunched in 2014 by an independent company, under the title European Rail Timetable, no longer affiliated with Thomas Cook Group.[7]
-Cooks 1907 Handbook to Norway and Denmark
-In 1874, Thomas Cook introduced his 'circular notes', a product that was originally devised by a London banker in the 1770s and was later superseded by American Express's 'traveller's cheques'.[8]
-Conflicts of interest between father and son were resolved when the son persuaded his father, Thomas Cook, to retire at the end of 1878. He moved back to Leicester and lived quietly until his death.
-The firm's growth was consolidated by John Mason Cook and his three sons, especially by its involvement with military transport and postal services for Britain and Egypt during the 1880s when Cook began organising tours to the Middle East.[9]
-In 1884, the British Government attempted to relieve General Gordon from Khartoum.
-The British army was transported up the Nile by Thomas Cook & Son.[3]
-By 1888, the company had established offices around the world, including three in Australia and one in Auckland, New Zealand, and in 1890, the company sold over 3.25 million tickets.[10]
-A husband and wife might, for example, pay £85 for a Thomas Cook tour of Germany, Switzerland, and France over six weeks.
-While expensive enough that the trip would likely be the only one in the couple's lifetime, the company would arrange for a variety of activities new to the middle-class, including museum visits, the opera, and mountain climbing.[11]
-John Mason Cook promoted, and even led, excursions to, for example, the Middle East where he was described as "the second-greatest man in Egypt".[10]
-In 1924, the company was renamed Thomas Cook & Son Ltd., after acquiring limited liability status.[4]
Non-family ownership
Thos. Cook & Son ad 1922
-With the boom in travel in the Edwardian era, John Mason Cook's sons, Frank Henry, Thomas Albert and Ernest Edward, were even more successful than their father and grandfather had been at running the business.
-Frank and Ernest opened a new headquarters in Berkeley Street, London in 1926, but unexpectedly sold the business two years later to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grandes Express Européens, operator of the Orient Express.[3]
-After the Fall of France, the Paris headquarters of the Wagons-Lits company was seized by the Germans, and the British assets taken over by the Custodian of Enemy Property.[12]
-In 1942, Thomas Cook & Son was sold to Hays Wharf Cartage Company, which was owned by the four major British railway companies.
-The company was nationalised along with the railways in 1948, becoming part of the British Transport Commission.[3]
-In the late 1950s, the company began showing information films at town halls throughout Britain to promote 'foreign holidays' (particularly France, Italy, Switzerland and Spain).
-The company sold "inclusive tours" (package holidays) using scheduled airlines but refused to sell cheap package holidays which compromised on quality and service.
-As a result, the company began to lose market share during the 1950s and 1960s, although its operating profits exceeded £1 million for the first time in 1965.
-The company was denationalised in 1972, when it was acquired from the British Government by a consortium of Trust House, Midland Bank and the Automobile Association.[13]
-Midland Bank acquired sole control in 1977.[3]
-The company's name was altered from Thomas Cook & Son, Ltd, to Thomas Cook Group Ltd in 1974, and the company began to relocate most of its administrative functions from London to Peterborough in 1977.[14]
-During the 1980s, Thomas Cook had its most visible business presence in the US, including robust traveller's cheque sales to regional US banks.
-The company had enough business critical mass to set up a computer centre near Princeton, New Jersey. Robert Gaffney, Charles Beach, Robin Dennis and Anthony Horne were some of the notable decision-makers in that era.
-Robert Maxwell bought substantial holdings in the company in 1988 and still held that interest when Crimson/Heritage purchased the US division of Thomas Cook for US$1.3 billion in 1989.[15]
-In June 1992, following the acquisition of Midland Bank by HSBC, Thomas Cook was sold to the German bank Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) and the charter airline LTU Group for £200 million.[3]
-In September 1994, American Express (Amex) bought the corporate travel interests of Thomas Cook Travel Inc. which represented about ten percent of the British company's total revenue.
-However, Amex was not able to buy the venerable Thomas Cook name; an American Express affiliate, Cook Travel Inc., had been operating under that name since 1991 in the United States.[16]
-Due to contractual difficulties LTU Group sold its 10% shares to WestLB in May 1995.
-During 1996 the company bought short-haul operator Sunworld and European city-breaks tour group Time Off.
-Within three years the company had combined Sunworld, Sunset, Inspirations, Flying Colours and Caledonian Airways into the JMC (for 'John Mason Cook') brand.[17]
-On 2 February 1999, the Carlson Leisure Group merged with Thomas Cook into a holding company owned by West LB, Carlson Inc and Preussag Aktiengesellschaft ("Preussag").[18]
-In 2000, the company announced its intention to sell its financial services division, in order to concentrate on tours and holidays.[19]
-In March 2001 the financial services division was sold to Travelex, who retained the right to use the Thomas Cook brand on traveller's cheques for five years.
-It sold off its worldwide foreign exchange business to Travelex in November 2000.[20]
In 2001, Thomas Cook was acquired by the German company C&N Touristic AG, which changed its name to Thomas Cook AG.[21]
References
"Thomas Cook in brand revamp".
The Guardian. 4 May 2001. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
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"Leicester – the birthplace of popular tourism".
The Story of Leicester. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
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"History of Thomas Cook".
The Telegraph. 20 September 2019. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
Andrew Williamson (2001).
The Golden Age of Travel (Travel Heritage).
Thomas Cook. ISBN 978-1-900341-33-2.
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"Leicester – the birthplace of popular tourism".
The Story of Leicester. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
Gross, Linda P.; Snyder, Theresa R. (2005). Philadelphia's 1876 Centennial Exhibition.
Arcadia Publishing. p. 123. ISBN 978-0738538884.
Briginshaw, David (1 November 2013).
"European Rail Timetable to be re-launched in February".
International Railway Journal. Retrieved 28 April 2019.
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Competition Commission Report 1995 Archived 6 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine
Speake, Jennifer (2003).
Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. ISBN 978-1579582470.
Anthony Coleman (1999). Millennium. Transworld Publishers. pp. 231–233. ISBN 978-0-593-04478-0.
Draznin, Yaffa Claire (2001).
Victorian London's Middle-Class Housewife:
What She Did All Day (#179). Contributions in Women's Studies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 138. ISBN 978-0-313-31399-8.
Tungate, Mark (2017).
The Escape Industry: How Iconic and Innovative Brands Built the Travel Business. Kogan Page. ISBN 978-0749473501.
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"Thomas Cook packaged and sold". BBC. 26 May 1972.
"Thomas Cook to relocate head office within Peterborough". Travel. 4 August 2015. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
"Thomas Cook joins forces with Crimson; $1.3 billion agency created". Travel Weekly. 18 December 1989.
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"American Express Deal for Thomas Cook Is Seen". New York Times. 10 September 1994. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
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"Case No IV/M.785 - Thomas Cook / Sunworld" (PDF).
Commission of the European Communities. 7 August 1996. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
"Westdeutsche Landesbank-Carlson-Thomas Cook (Merger)".
Commission of the European Communities. 26 May 1999.
"UK Business Park".
Archived from the original on 15 February 2012.
"Thomas Cook cheques arm sold for £440m".
The Telegraph. 9 November 2000. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
"First Choice shakes off winter blues". BBC. 12 June 2001.
Retrieved 21 September 2019.
Further reading
W. Fraser Rae (1891),
"The Business of Travel: a Fifty Years' Record of Progress", Nature, 44 (1133): 247–248, Bibcode:1891Natur..44..247., doi:10.1038/044247c0, hdl:2027/coo1.ark:/13960/t8pc3j956, OL 14588832M,
"Banquet to commemorate the fiftieth year of the business of Thomas Cook & Son, at the Hôtel Métropole, July 22nd, 1891"
J. Pudney, The Thomas Cook Story. 1953
Edmund S. Swinglehurst, Cook's Tours: The Story of Popular Travel. Poole, Dorset: Blandford, 1982
Piers Brendon, Thomas Cook: 150 Years of Popular Travel. London, 1991
The History of tourism: Thomas Cook and the origins of leisure travel. London: Routledge, 1998.
Benedikt Bock (2010). Baedeker & Cook: Tourismus am Mittelrhein 1756 bis ca. 1914 [Baedeker and Cook:
Tourism in the Middle Rhine 1756 to about 1914]. Mainzer Studien zur Neueren Geschichte (in German). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3631595817.
F. Robert Hunter (2004). "Tourism and Empire:
The Thomas Cook & Son Enterprise on the Nile, 1868–1914". Middle Eastern Studies. 40 (5): 28–54. doi:10.1080/0026320042000265666. JSTOR 4289940.
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