Heroes & Villains: Vladimir Raitz (d. 31 August 2010)
sufaud
The Independent (London); Jan 10, 2004; Simon Calder; p. 54
"THEY WOULD sleep under canvas, enjoy delicious meat-filled meals and
as much local wine as they could put away, and would have return
flights to Corsica for the all-inclusive charge of pounds 32 and 10s."
In ration-book Britain in 1950, that sort of holiday represented a
great temptation and a huge investment; the present equivalent is
pounds 650. But it was a heroic promise by the founder of the package-
holiday business, Vladimir Raitz - a 27-year-old journalist who risked
his family fortune to create an industry whose principal product is
human happiness.
Villains? The travel industry has seen plenty. For fortune- hunters
lacking in scruples, the great thing about selling dreams is that
people willingly hand over cash in advance for the prospect of a sun-
filled fortnight in summer on a Mediterranean beach. Many thousands of
British holidaymakers have seen their planned vacation disappear along
with their savings when the holiday company they are booked with
collapses. Usually the cause is mismanagement rather than fraud; the
most extreme example was the failure of Court Line 30 summers ago, in
which 100,000 people had their holidays cancelled or curtailed. After
that commercial catastrophe, Britain introduced the world's strictest
bonding system for package holidays. So robust is the Atol system that
you or I can happily buy a package from the MyTravel organisation -
which lost close on a billion pounds last year - secure in the
knowledge that the worst that can happen is that our money will be
refunded in full.
When the first package holiday took off from Gatwick in May 1950, the
11 paying customers enjoyed no such protection. But they did enjoy a
revolutionary concept. In an age when airlines were run by and for
governments, and charged fares that excluded the vast majority of the
population, they were flying. They travelled at the almost unheard- of
speed of 170mph to Lyon, where the plane and its passengers refuelled
for the second leg to Calvi in Corsica. Here, they spent a week on the
beach and in the camp restaurant, enjoying carnivorous and bibulous
pleasures that eluded those who remained behind in austere post-war
Britain.
"It began by a fluke, like everything else does," Raitz says now, in
his 82nd year. He was born in Moscow in 1922, but his family fled
Stalin's regime six years later. Intourist's loss, our gain. His pan-
European education culminated with a degree from the London School of
Economics (where Stelios Haji-Ioannou of easyJet was later to study).
Raitz got a job just along the road at Reuters, as a journalist. In
1949 he was invited by another expatriate Russian to Corsica - and, in
particular, a beachside camp that served as a kind of Butlinski's for
those who had fled Soviet communism. He saw the potential for profit
in selling Mediterranean holidays to the fun- starved UK. All he
needed for Horizon Holidays to take off was a licence to operate
charter flights to Corsica. That was the point when he became aware of
the array of vested interests who would do everything they could to
constrict the democratisation of travel.
Vladimir Raitz could have crashed out of travel after his first
encounter with the tangle of regulations that dictated who could fly
and the fares they could charge. British European Airways - now part
of British Airways - objected to the proposed flights to Corsica
because they constituted "material divertion of traffic". That was an
interesting one to argue, since then (as now) the airline did not fly
to the island. But Raitz persisted. Eventually, he was allowed to take
teachers and students; other occupations were banned, and instead
faced a 48-hour journey - or a ruinously expensive BEA flight, plus a
ferry - to reach the island.
Within a few years, the rules were relaxed and dozens of other
companies started up. After 25 years, Raitz's firm succumbed to the
usual travel ailment: too much capacity in too crowded a market. The
giant, rival Clarkson's brand, which became part of Court Line, used
absurdly over-optimistic business predictions in the leanest of years:
1974, the time of the three- day week and political turbulence. Raitz
was ruined. "I might have lost the company I created and I might have
lost a lot of money - but I had never cheated anyone."
Despite the downfall of Horizon, Raitz has remained in travel - and
the package holiday remains at the core of the industry. Around 20
million of us will take an "air-inclusive" holiday this year. The
reason: the economics of the package are compelling. Charter an
aircraft, commit to beds in a resort and you can offer a week in the
sun for an absurdly low price.
There are still villains out there, not least the timeshare touts who
promise free holidays in exchange for attending a presentation where
absurd claims are made, but not in writing. Many hapless souls pay way
over the odds for a share in a resort, and strangely never receive the
promised free holiday. But Vladimir Raitz is living proof that there
is honest potential for profit in this particular industry of human
happiness. He enabled the masses to travel. And, just a half-century
or so after his pioneering charter flight, this year British Airways
is finally launching services from Gatwick to Corsica.