Thomas Cook and Co-op Travel merger follows current trend.

Thomas Cook and Co-op travel announced they are going to merge. Thomas Cook will own 70% of the new company although initially separate branding will remain.

Since the recession began in 2008 the tourism industry in the UK has been one of the hardest hit and on top of this the ash cloud disruption cost these companies substantial costs. Mergers within the industry appear to be the name of the game.

British Airways and Iberia have recently tied the knot and it is forecast that many other airlines will do the same. Alliance groups with the airline industry have already been formed and these closer working practices are a natural progression to merger.

Clearly, this is all done to cut costs and ultimately leave the customer less choice on the high street and redundancies are inevitable. To be fair high street sales are reducing year on year due to customers looking to organise their own trips abroad and for the most part they are selling many of the same packages.

Given numerous smaller travel companies have gone to the wall it would be hard to criticise management for taking this step.

They anticipate that savings of around £35 million and place them in a stronger position. They will now be the largest retail chain with over 1200 stores although Thomas Cook's online business is not part of this merger.