Cosmos brand victory can be ‘springboard’ for growth

Cosmos Tours & Cruises says regaining the Cosmos brand will act as a “springboard” for growth.

The company has won a long-fought battle with The Monarch Group for full rights and licences to the Cosmos brand after what both parties called a “collaborative agreement”.

Cosmos Tours & Cruises will now change its trading name to just Cosmos from April 24.

Monarch is to change its corporate name from Cosmos Holidays to Monarch Holidays with immediate effect.

As part of Monarch Travel Group’s transition to new owner Greybull Capital in October 2014, it was agreed Monarch would retain a licence to use the Cosmos name until October 2018.

Monarch stopped using Cosmos as a group brand in 2015, but kept its corporate name as Cosmos Holidays. At the time, Cosmos Tours & Cruises, not part of the sale to Greybull, claimed it would lose business with Monarch ditching the Cosmos name.

Cosmos Tours & Cruises chief executive Giles Hawke said: “There was confusion in the market, and now there won’t be. It will act as a springboard to grow the company.

“Being called Cosmos Tours & Cruises has limited what we can sell. This allows us to broaden our product range.”

As well as cruise and touring programmes, the operator runs a lesser-known mid and long-haul beach programme to destinations including The Maldives and Dubai.

Hawke added: “Once we become Cosmos, we can look at other sectors of travel. We could do a lot more if agents and consumers knew we offered it. Any agent that remembers Cosmos’ Distant Dreams will understand the kind of thing I am talking about – and agents will want to sell it.”