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How Could Travel Giant Thomas Cook Fail?

Its package tour business model was successful for 178 years, but as consumer demand changed and moved online, the company did not.

By Shannon Sims

After 178 years of operation, the British tour operator Thomas Cook , one of the world’s oldest travel brands, with 19 million annual customers, closed shop on Monday. The company announced that it would be liquidating its assets and filed for bankruptcy, despite attempts to rescue the brand.

At the moment of its collapse, Thomas Cook had a debt of 1.7 billion pounds, about $2.1 billion, an amount the chief executive, Peter Fankhauser, had called “insurmountable.” It had been in negotiations to obtain $250 million in emergency financing when it declared bankruptcy.

About 600,000 travelers around the world were affected, 150,000 of them from the United Kingdom and about twice as many from Germany, said the airline industry analyst Bob Mann, and more than 20,000 employees worldwide found themselves without a job.

What happened? At a time when more people than ever are traveling, how could an established brand like Thomas Cook implode? And what now?

What was Thomas Cook?

The Thomas Cook Group was a British travel company famous for offering a distinct convenience to travelers: the ability to have all the pieces of their vacations linked, from flight to hotel room to local transport to tours, and even meals. The brand offered one-stop shopping for those who needed a getaway: Book a Thomas Cook vacation, and the only thing you’d need to do was pack a bag and go. The company even ran its own hotels and in recent years, operated its own airline. Its slogan pointed to the all-inclusive aspect of its business model: “Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it.”

[ The sudden collapse of Thomas Cook snarled travel plans, sowed confusion at airports and left hundreds of thousands stranded .]

That concept worked for generations of travelers, and the brand built a solid reputation. Zane Kerby, president and chief executive of the American Society of Travel Advisors , an association representing travel agencies, said that Thomas Cook’s reputation among both travel advisers and their clients was very good: “a quality brand.”

As recently as this summer, Thomas Cook Airlines was flying passengers to at least 82 destinations around the world, in Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. Although the United States was not the company’s primary market, it still had a significant presence in some markets: over the past year, the company operated nearly 1,000 flights with 257,000 passengers out of Orlando International Airport, according to Carolyn Fennell, the airport’s senior director of public affairs.

Problem #1: The internet

The travel bookings business has increasingly moved online, but Cook’s business largely did not, though it announced an alliance with Expedia in 2017. It relied heavily on physical stores and telephone assistance. Globally, the brand operated more than 600 physical stores — called “high street” stores in the United Kingdom for their location on a town’s main commercial street.

“They were never very good at digital,” said Rafat Ali, the chief executive of Skift , a New York-based media company that provides research and marketing services for the travel industry, “that’s fair to say.”

Problem #2: Declining interest in package tours

“The package holiday market has gotten squeezed because it is so much easier for consumers to pick the elements they want for a holiday, and for them to be able to pick them at a good price,” said Tim Davis, the managing director of Pace Dimensions , a consulting firm that advises travel businesses on how to adapt to the digital world. He pointed out that over the past decade, Expedia and Booking Holdings have come to dominate the market with their search capabilities. “Instead of moving in that direction, Thomas Cook moved toward the direction of being a tour operator. Although they had more control over it — by owning the hotels and the airline — the market has continued to get squeezed.”

Mr. Davis put it bluntly: “It is a market that is going to die, it is just a matter of time.”

Scott Keyes, founder of the air travel website Scott’s Cheap Flights , said the desire of millennials for more individualized journeys also played a role.

People can now do their own research, “find your own adventures,” Mr. Keyes said. “There’s new competition in tours and activities, whether it’s big players like Airbnb or smaller players, the market has gotten more difficult for tour operators because of this shifting taste. It’s not as necessary to book packages.”

The package business is also seasonal, said Mr. Ali, of Skift. “The problem is that packages have a very defined season. So if one season goes bad — maybe because the summer is too hot, or because a key market, like Egypt, is experiencing trouble — it affects the cash flow of a company like Thomas Cook very badly.”

Problem #3: Operating an airline is expensive

In the early 2000s, Thomas Cook began moving into the airline business. The company slowly absorbed Condor , a Frankfurt-based airline that was formerly a subsidiary of Lufthansa. In 2003, the company began operating its own airline, Thomas Cook Airlines, a United Kingdom-based operation with 34 planes in the fleet traveling to 82 destinations.

Many experts pointed to that decision as a primary source of its troubles.

“It’s very hard to operate a travel agency, and it is very hard to operate an airline,” said Mr. Kerby of the Travel Advisors association. “And the lessons you learn operating a successful agency do not always transfer to operating an airline. Both are independent, complicated businesses in their own ways.”

The aviation consultant John Strickland noted that carriers like Thomas Cook don’t have the flexibility of a stand-alone airline. “You aren’t offering the same kind of schedule options,” he said. The sunk costs of running an airline, combined with the operating costs — the crew, maintenance, and more — make any airline vulnerable to declines in demand. But Mr. Strickland said that Thomas Cook’s business model made it even more troublesome. “The nature of the market is that they are seeing big peaks in the summer and troughs in the winter,” he said. If you own your own planes and don’t have passengers during quieter months, “that becomes a big challenge.”

Thomas Cook’s chief competition was the German-based tour company TUI Group , which also has an airline. When the internet threatened to eat into the business of conventional tour operators, TUI executives started acquiring and operating cruise ships and hotels in an attempt to differentiate their agency from the competition. Now, in addition to a fleet of 150 airplanes flown by five company-owned airlines, TUI operates 17 ocean liners and 380 hotels mainly in Southern Europe and Southeast Asia.

“We’re getting 70 percent of our earnings from our cruise ships and hotels. Tour operations and airlines make up only 30 percent,” said Kuzy Alexander Esener, the head of media relations for TUI.

The loss of Thomas Cook is an opportunity for TUI, Mr. Esener said. Its TUI Fly airline has been contacted by the British authorities searching for jetliners to charter to bring Thomas Cook’s stranded passengers back home.

Problem #4: Brexit

In May, Thomas Cook’s chief executive, Mr. Fankhauser, warned that “the Brexit process has led many U.K. customers to delay their holiday plans for this summer.”

Mr. Kerby also blamed the uncertainty around Brexit, at least in part. He pointed to the particular difficulty of operating an airline in Europe, a market that is awash in low-cost carriers like Ryanair and easyJet, and where purchases need to be made in dollars. “A lot of your bills are in dollars; you have to buy oil in dollars,” he said. “So when there are shocks to the system, like the U.K. with Brexit and the pound losing so much value, all of a sudden that makes the loans you have very difficult to service.”

“Travel agencies are doing well around the world. Airlines are doing well around the world. But combining those together with an uncertain market and a falling currency, for a company that is saddled with that much debt, you get a perfect storm.”

Problem #5: Those 600,000 travelers

Thomas Cook customers who have flights booked through October 6 will be flown home, using a cobbled together fleet of airplanes, most of them from charter companies, said Mr. Mann, the airline analyst. Those with tickets on Condor, a German carrier that is a subsidiary of Thomas Cook, will be able to fly home on that airline, which continues to operate.

There are at least a dozen charter airlines around the world that together have more than 60 planes that could be put to use, he said. Many will have available planes because of the dip in airline traffic that comes in the post-summer travel season, he said.

Atlas Air of Purchase, N.Y., a cargo company that owns a 747 passenger plane, dispatched its 400-plus seat jumbo jet to Manchester, England, to help with the repatriation. Mr. Mann expected charter companies that fly passengers to the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which ended in August, to be enlisted.

He also expected airlines like Malaysia Airlines, with underused Airbus A380 wide-body planes, to be enlisted.

“The logistics of the British piece are probably going to be 750 flights, assuming they can do them efficiently and get people on them,” Mr. Mann said. “It’s kind of Dunkirk as far as the United Kingdom goes,” referring to the naval evacuation of British troops from France during World War II.

A spokeswoman for British Airways said the airline is working with the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to provide seats for customers returning to the United Kingdom on existing flights.

In Germany, Lufthansa Group said it is honoring tickets booked through Thomas Cook back to Germany on its Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines or SWISS carriers.

One group of planes that won’t be ferrying passengers: the Thomas Cook fleet, which Mr. Mann watched being flown to its Manchester base on radar Sunday night.

Patrick Scott contributed reporting from Saigon and Christine Negroni contributed reporting from Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of travelers who were stranded by the Thomas Cook failure. It is at least 150,000, not the total 600,000 affected by the company's collapse. 

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How Thomas Cook relaunched as a start-up in the middle of a global travel shutdown

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By Jennifer Faull, Deputy Editor

June 10, 2021 | 8 min read

Listen to article 4 min

In September 2019, Thomas Cook went bust. Less than a year later, it was reborn as a digital start-up. Here’s the story of how one marketer fought to keep the 180-year-old brand alive through liquidation, acquisition and a pandemic that grounded virtually all tourists.

The rebirth of Thomas Cook clashed with travel bans due to the pandemic

There have been many points in the past 18 months where Jo Migom must have felt like giving up. Take September 20 2019. A day that started like any other, but by the end saw her fielding messages from hundreds of bewildered staff worried about their futures as rumblings of liquidation emerged. Two days later, their worst fears were realized as the world’s oldest travel company fell into administration.

“Actually seeing us pull the plug was one of the worst moments in my career. The thing I had worked so hard for, 10 years at Thomas Cook. It was incredibly hard,” she recalls.

But out of despair came the daunting prospect of potentially keeping the company alive. Migom, then the head of its digital operations, and Alan French – then head of strategy and technology, now chief executive officer – had been working on a digital overhaul of the company for some time and saw an opportunity in taking the best bits of Thomas Cook and rebuilding it as an online-only operation. They had spent years trying to move an oil tanker, but here was a chance to shed its legacy systems and offering and finally take the brand in previously impossible directions.

But they needed cash. “We started discussions with shareholders,” she says. “I never thought we would succeed in all honesty. We called it project Firefly for the slim chance that we might.”

Migom soon found herself in front of a room of investors from Chinese tourism group Fosun trying to show what the brand could do with a little bit of help. She recalls her spiel on why the financials made sense, the relatively low risk – and cost – of setting up as digital first that could solve key problems the ‘old’ Thomas Cook had, but was just too big and slow to address. However, it was the brand, the heritage, the global awareness of it, and the unwavering love for the ‘Don’t just book it...’ tagline that she says sealed the deal.

She and French landed £11m in capital to execute their vision. While Thomas Cook of old was shackled with an expensive airline fleet, over 600 retail branches, and a tour operating division, the new Thomas Cook would have just a website and a customer service center. It was criticized for failing to accept that hand-holding wasn’t really what people wanted from a travel company in the Airbnb-era, and so new Thomas Cook would service as a one-stop-shop to book everything from a ready-made package holiday to a more flexible arrangement with a variety of flights from different operators, hotels, transfers, car hire, airport parking, currency and insurance.

“We will offer customers choice and a better booking experience. Our website is designed to be fast and simple to use and our priority is to ensure customers can book their holiday with absolute confidence,” said French last year.

Wasting no time, they got to work on hiring staff, looking for offices and creating a roadmap for what the relaunch of a beloved British brand would look like.

And then the pandemic hit.

Migom shakes her head and rolls her eyes as she recalls flights around the world being grounded, holidays canceled and airports shut down. At this point, I’m not sure anyone would have blamed her for calling it quits.

However, she looks back at the past year not as the catastrophic disaster that it has been for many travel companies, but instead a rare opportunity to flex its start-up muscles and do what it couldn’t do as ‘old’ Thomas Cook – adapt quickly to survive.

They sought to establish Thomas Cook as a trusted voice that could explain the constant changes to confused consumers, with the website designed in a clear way that communicated key updates to travelers. They experimented with staffing of remote contact centers that can now scale up or down depending on when a country opens or closes for travel. When Portugal was put on the UK’s green list, for example, there was a 500% surge in demand overnight. And having never had a chance to set up in an office, they’ve been unfazed by the move to homeworking and organized current and incoming staff so seamlessly that Migom hints it may be a permanent solution.

Testament to how it’s coped, Migom says they’ve not put any staff on furlough but instead have been actively recruiting for over 20 different positions. Compare that to the travel and tourism industry as a whole where, according to the Office for National Statistics, nearly 50% of workers were still on furlough in late January of this year. British Airways has been forced to slash thousands of jobs while companies like STA Travel and Specialist Leisure Group have gone bust.

And while Migom is looking on the bright side, the last 18 months have also bought her time to take stock of the brand; what she would bring forward under the ‘new’ Thomas Cook and how she would handle negative associations that would inevitably follow it into the future.

“It’s been very much a learning exercise,” she says. “We thought about changing the logo, but continuous research and the awareness of the brands has led us to conclude how important it is to keep the key recognizable assets. I think keeping the sunny heart was the right decision.”

Perhaps surprisingly, one asset that’s still being debated is the famous ‘Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it’ slogan that first hit our vernacular in 1984 and has stayed with the brand ever since.

“We’re still working out what to do with it,” she says.

The hesitancy perhaps stems from concerns on where to draw the line from old to new Thomas Cook. Migom says that thanks to news of a relaunch hitting headlines just as Covid’s grip on the world took hold, there was a wave of nostalgia-induced positive sentiment towards the company.

“Brand awareness has doubled [compared to old Thomas Cook] so if you’re a start-up in travel, that is a dream scenario,” she says. “While it’s great we get exposure for things that we do, if something small goes wrong we risk getting the same high exposure.”

In other words, ‘new’ Thomas Cook is not afforded the same margin of error as another travel start-up – instead it’s held to the same high standard as Thomas Cook of old. The legacy of the brand is both a blessing and a curse that Migom is trying to navigate.

“We are doing absolutely everything that we can to live up to those eye-high expectations. If anything goes wrong with a customer, the whole team, including the CEO [Alan French], gets an email about it.”

It will be of little surprise that marketing has been pretty non-existent for Thomas Cook. Forsun has afforded it big budgets to tell the world that it’s back – but what’s the point when travel is still so risky?

In the meantime, all focus has been on SEO to protect the rankings established over the past two decades, which so far has consisted of a huge content launch and “dipping the toe” into paid social with a campaign called ‘Love This’, as well as building its influencer community.

“It’s a challenge because so many people still don’t know that Thomas Cook is back. So you get the comments from people who think it went bust. But we have fantastic fans on our Facebook page who explain Thomas Cook is back on our behalf. We actually sent them a gift to thank them for being such great advocates.”

All the while, Migom’s finger is hovering on the ‘go live’ button for a major advertising assault. “We have the agencies, the campaign, the media plan – we’re just waiting for the right time.

“It’s so heavily dependent on the communications by the government. We can’t plan for it – it’s almost impulsive.”

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This American Said He Had to Pay $2,400 to Get Home After Travel Company Thomas Cook Collapsed

T he collapse of one of the world’s oldest travel agencies has impacted an estimated 600,000 travelers all over the world on Monday—including some Americans.

Thomas Cook collapsed into liquidation in the early hours of Monday morning after rescue talks failed to secure $250 million in contingency funding, leaving many thousands who paid for vacations with the company without a return ticket home.

“We are sorry to inform you that all holidays and flights provided by these companies have been canceled and are no longer operating,” the Thomas Cook said, adding that all Thomas Cook retail shops have also closed.

Thomas Cook is a British company, but it attracted customers from all over the world, particularly Europe.

British stranded travelers are now directed to turn to the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority—which is working to fly back passengers who booked their flights with the travel agency and were due back to the U.K. between Sept. 23 and Oct. 6.

On Monday, Condor Airlines , a German airline subsidiary to Thomas Cook, said that it currently had 240,000 customers abroad awaiting flights to return home.

The travel agency also advised passengers who were due to fly out of the U.K. with Thomas Cook Airlines that their flights were canceled.

While few Americans are likely to be impacted, at least one Florida resident said he spent more than $2,000 to get home after booking a trip to Scotland with the company.

BBC Scotland spoke to American Joe Datolli, who was stuck at Glasgow Airport with his mother Sally waiting for a flight back to Orlando.

“It’s been frustrating… While we were asleep, ready to head back in the morning, they went out of business and there’s nobody to be seen,” he said.

Datolli told the BBC that he and his mother were able to book a flight to Orlando from Dublin but it ended up costing them nearly $2,400 dollars more.

Joe Datolli has had to pay $1600 to get a flight home from Glasgow to Florida today after the #ThomasCook collapse: pic.twitter.com/udPTqqHfxL — Clyde 1 News (@Clyde1News) September 23, 2019

“As we’re standing here trying to book another flight the prices keep climbing or the seats keep getting taken. It’s becoming more and more difficult,” he said.

The collapse of the agency has also affected thousands of employees.

In a statement, Thomas Cook Chief Executive Peter Fankhauser, apologized to customers and employees.

“I would like to apologize to our millions of customers, and thousands of employees, suppliers and partners who have supported us for many years. Despite huge uncertainty over recent weeks, our teams continued to put customers first, showing why Thomas Cook is one of the best-loved brands in travel,” he said. “This marks a deeply sad day for the company which pioneered package holidays and made travel possible for millions of people around the world.”

Here is what to know about Thomas Cook:

Why did Thomas Cook collapse?

Faced with Brexit, poor mergers and increased competition, the 178-year-old company finally fell to its demise on Monday.

Key to its downfall is Thomas Cook’s merger with MyTravel, a U.K.-based package travel company, in 2007. What had initially started out with hope, ended up in disaster. Thomas Cook ended up with huge debts that proved impossible to manage as, MyTravel had only made a profit once since 2001. The impact of the merger came to a head in May after Thomas Cook reported a record loss of £1.5 billion ($1.85 billion) and a steep drop in summer sales.

Thomas Cook also faced new competition from lower cost rival Jet2Holidays, putting the company’s profits under fresh pressure . Previously, the market had been split between Thomas Cook and Tui. Within two months, Thomas Cook had to issue two profit warnings .

Brexit didn’t help their situation either—the original March 29, 2019 Brexit deadline meant that people were nervous about booking holidays .

In August this year, there was hope that Thomas Cook could break free from disaster after it agreed to a $1.1 billion rescue deal with Fosun, a China-based investment company, Thomas Cook’s biggest shareholder and its debtholders.

However, as of Monday, Thomas Cook collapsed into liquidation after talks with shareholders, lenders and the U.K. government failed to come up with a rescue plan after the company’s banks demanded a further $250 million.

The agency was a popular one-stop-shop for travelers—known for its all-inclusive travel packages: the agency would book flights, hotels and tours for travelers.

Marc-David L. Seidel, professor at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business says travel agencies like Thomas Cook have become less relevant and necessary for travelers during the internet age.

“The rise of online travel information shifted power in the industry so that individual consumers no longer had to rely on brick and mortar travel agencies for expertise as much,” he tells TIME. “This intensified as the internet transitioned to more of an online travel community model where individual travelers share information about everything travel related to each other. That readily available and detailed information further reduced the power of travel agencies which had traditionally been the primary source of such expertise.”

Seidel adds that the rise of Airbnb might have also played a part.

“The growth trend of small travel providers such as individuals offering up rental units through internet platforms also puts pressure on organizations like Thomas Cook as a portion of their revenue was based on lodging,” he says.

Are American travelers affected?

While the bulk of Thomas Cook customers were based in Europe, the agency offered services to major U.S cities including New York City, Orlando and San Fransisco.

The State Department says that it is not able to track how many U.S. citizens are currently affected because American are not required to register their travel to a foreign country.

A State Department spokesperson tells TIME that the agency is currently monitoring the situation and that travelers should make their own arrangements to return to the United States.

“If Americans are destitute and without resources to get back to the United States, they should contact the U.S. Embassy or Consulate in the country where they are traveling to help them get in touch with family members or to evaluate other options,” a state department spokesperson said.

Frederic Dimanche, the director at the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Ryerson University tells TIME that the effect on American passengers will be “not much” and that agency had a limited presence in the U.S.—with most of the company’s business coming from the U.K., Germany and Scandinavian countries.

“Thomas Cook had offices in the U.S., but beyond that most operations are European… this will likely be inconsequential for (travelers),” he says.

Seidel also says that the agency going out of business will most likely not have too much of an effect on American travelers.

“They have limited service in some cities—basically, it’s major cities and the leisure market, and a lot of that service would be outbound rather than inbound, so people visiting the States from Europe and a lot of their stuff was offered as packages,” he says.

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Thomas Cook is relaunched - but without shops, planes or travel reps

• Thomas Cook
• Wednesday 16 September 2020 at 4:01pm

Interview with ITV News Business Editor Joel Hills

The Thomas Cook brand has been “reinvented” as an online travel company – with no planes, offices or beds of its own.

Chinese firm Fosun Tourism Group acquired the brand for £11 million after the 178-year-old travel company collapsed in September 2019 .

The new version began selling holidays online and over the phone on Wednesday and does not have any stores.

It employs around 50 people, which is a drop in the ocean compared with the 9,000 jobs lost when the company collapsed .

Alan French, who was group strategy and technology director at Thomas Cook when it collapsed, has been hired as UK chief executive of the new travel agency and spoke to our business editor Joel Hills .

Asked why the company has relaunched in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic – when air travel is down 80% - he said: “We’ve got a number of things that make us different from other players in this space.

“Firstly, we don’t have any debt - we’ve got Fosun sitting behind us. Secondly, we are digital and really only digital.

“Thirdly, we’ve got access to innovation and if you have a look at what Fosun’s doing in China with the consumer-led brands I think that’s very powerful.”

The failure of Thomas Cook led to the repatriation of around 150,000 holidaymakers who were overseas.

Mr French pledged that the new travel agency’s customers can be “reassured their money is protected” due to its “robust financial structure”.

All holidays are ATOL-protected, but he stopped short of promising a refund within 14 days if customers find themselves in a country added to the UK’s quarantine list after they have arrived.

Why did Thomas Cook collapse?

“We will work through what our options are first, so we will try and give the customer an alternative… but if none of that works for the customer we will fulfill our obligations to the customer.”

He added: “We have got the same issues – if there is a huge demand coming through then we’ll have to process that and we’ll have to look at how that process comes through so we will do our best to do that in 14 days.”

And after Tui were investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Thomas Cook can ill afford significant delays to refunds.

Tui vowed to make the payments by the end of the month on Wednesday after the CMA revealed it had received thousands of complaints from passengers claiming travel firms were withholding their cash.

The competition watchdog pointed out that consumer protection law requires refunds within 14 days. 

Thomas Cook only offers trips to destinations from which UK holidaymakers can return without entering quarantine, such as Italy, Turkey and parts of Greece.

But Spain – the biggest market by far, with more British visitors than France, Italy and Portugal combined – is not one of its destinations.

“I think the uncertainty is a dampener on it,” Mr French admitted, when asked if people actually want to go on holiday.

“As soon as that uncertainty goes away, I can see the market really moving very quickly.”

Taxpayers face £156m bill for Thomas Cook collapse

Former Thomas Cook boss denies saddling group with mammoth debt burden

• The Top Attractions In Rostov...

The Top Attractions in Rostov-on-Don

Contributor / Journalist

Rostov-On-Don city is a port and the administrative center of Southern Federal District of Russia. It lies to the southeast of the East European Plain, on the Don River. The city stands on the banks of the Don River, about 46 kilometres east of the Azov Sea and 1,070 kilometres south of Moscow. The climate is temperate continental. Rostov-on-Don has a specific unique outlook because of its rich historical and cultural heritage.

There are more than 1,000 objects of cultural heritage in the city, among them 482 architectural monuments, 70 archaeological monuments, eight large memorial complexes and 106 monuments. It is a major transport hub of the southern part of European Russia and a large educational and scientific center of Russia. So take a look at the city’s major points of interest. Our tips will make your trip to Rostov-On-Don unforgettable and full of interesting activities. https://www.instagram.com/p/BXex-Lzh8uV/?taken-at=213270263 Pushkin Street Take a look at this landscaped boulevard, lined with thousands of trees, flowers, restaurants, food kiosks, benches, memorials and statues. Pushkin Street leads into both the City Park and October Revolution Park. The biggest street of the city is always crowded and you can find a lot of activities there as a tourist. Undoubtedly the first place to go upon arrival, especially if you’re hungry. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYVR7KrHPyl/?tagged=%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD Don River Lookout Right after a visit to Pushkin Street, move to Don River lookout (aka, the Embankment) where you’ll enjoy a stroll along the riverside. The Embankment is lined with several restaurants, statues, fountains and a few souvenir shops; it also has an outstanding picturesque view. Yet it is considered to be the centre of Rostov’s nightlife. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYQtspxHtsu/?taken-at=1092801284125416 Rostov Zoo If you’re in travelling with children, then this zoo is well worth a visit. One of the largest zoos in Russia, it is home to a huge variety of animals, including giraffes, camels, polar bears, falcons, reptiles, fish and tigers. Located right in the city centre. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYQDpiIAGEU/?taken-at=879146942 Maxim Gorky Academic Drama Theatre. This theatre is a famous venue for dramatic plays, comedies and concerts in the Rostov area. It is located on the eastern end of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street (Teatralnaya Square 1), directly across the street from the monument known as ‘Stella’. Maxim Gorky Theatre operates even in summer when all other venues are closed. https://www.instagram.com/p/BNCnw_DA4Lo/?tagged=%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BA Central Market This massive outdoor and indoor market, which consists of many tiny shops and kiosks, can be both exciting and intimidating for tourists. Market shopping is one of the most memorable experiences that Russia has to offer for an adventurous tourist who just arrived here. You can buy anything here. The market is located in the downtown area, on Stanislavskovo Street, just four blocks south of the central intersection of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYXMs9Xjcsk/?tagged=%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BD Bridges Over the Don River & Embankment This city network of bridges and overpasses was constructed between 2007 and 2010, and it consists of a steel and a concrete composite structures across the River Don. Almost all the bridges were designed by the St ­Petersburg engineering firm TransMost and constructed by the Moscow contractor MostoTrest.

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