Kuoni Brand Guidelines: A 1906 Zurich Travel Office, Bond Street and a Yellow Globe

A travel office at the Bellevue.

Kuoni began in Zurich in 1906. German Wikipedia says Alfred Kuoni opened a travel office at the city’s Bellevue that year as part of his brothers’ forwarding business, and that its first outing was a group trip up the Uetliberg, the hill above Zurich, on its mountain railway. An escorted trip to Egypt followed in 1909. In 1912 the office went its own way as Reisebüro Alfred Kuoni, and in 1924 it opened its first branch, in St. Moritz.

In 1925, German Wikipedia says, the business became a public limited company, with the employee Harry Hugentobler as a partner; he ran it until 1970. A Paris agency was taken over in 1928, and through the 1930s and 1940s the company ran group tours. After 1950, as air travel spread, it grew quickly, adding charter flights and long-haul tours, and in 1970 it took the name Reisebüro Kuoni AG. By 1983, German Wikipedia says, it employed 2,200 people worldwide, 1,200 of them in Switzerland. It started the lower-priced Helvetic Tours brand in 1983, bought the charter airline Edelweiss Air in the mid-1990s and sold it to Swiss in 2008.

The group was listed on the Swiss stock exchange and sold its business-travel arm in December 2003. Through all of these changes the name stayed the same: the founder’s surname, written as one short word.

Bond Street, Dorking and the department store.

Kuoni came to Britain in 1965, when it bought Challis and Benson, a travel agency in London’s Bond Street; English Wikipedia and the company’s own timeline both give that date. A British tour operation followed in 1966. In 1974 Kuoni took over Houlders World Holidays and moved its tour operation to new headquarters in Dorking, Surrey, where Kuoni UK is still based; the company says it moved from Kuoni House to Touristik House in the town in 2018, after 44 years. Later purchases, English Wikipedia says, included Voyages Jules Verne in 1998, Journeys of Distinction and Kirker Holidays in 2006, and the luxury operator Carrier in 2008.

Other agents mattered too: TravelMole reported in May 2012 that Kuoni had jointly branded shops with five independent agents and dedicated wall space in another 25. The company says it introduced new-look brochures in 2008, the same year it opened its own first two stores, in Kensington and Manchester, and that its first UK television advert ran in 2013. Its programme leans toward long-haul holidays: English Wikipedia lists multi-centre trips, safaris and honeymoons, with the Maldives, Mauritius, Thailand and Sri Lanka among its main destinations.

The most visible step on the high street was a tie-up with the department store John Lewis. TravelMole reported in May 2012 that Kuoni would open concessions in four John Lewis stores, on Oxford Street and in Reading, Southampton and Cardiff, that autumn. The units were to “combine the look and feel of the two brands,” with John Lewis furniture and Kuoni fittings, sit in the customer-service area next to the Gift List department, and use iPads and plasma screens to show holidays. Kuoni also became the travel partner for the John Lewis Gift List, so wedding guests could contribute to a honeymoon booked with it. Retail Gazette reported in June 2013 that the first four had opened in October 2012 and that John Lewis would double the number with four more that autumn; the company’s timeline names Leicester, Brent Cross, Aberdeen and Welwyn Garden City.

Television carried the look further. The company says its 2015 advert, “Find your amazing,” showed a synchronised swimmer in the Maldives running on water, and that a “Travel out of the ordinary” campaign at the end of 2016 used an advert directed by Luke Losey.

How holiday companies present themselves.

Package-holiday operators and travel agencies sell something the customer cannot see before the trip, so the brand has to stand in for the holiday. In the shop era that meant printed brochures and the windows of high-street shops, filled with resort photographs and destination names. Online agencies moved the same job to booking pages, where search boxes, hotel photographs and a single package price do the work the brochure once did.

Television has been a second shop window. On the Beach aired its first TV advert in December 2013, a campaign filmed on Fuerteventura, according to English Wikipedia; loveholidays’ chief executive told City A.M. in 2024 that his company did not spend on TV advertising and leaned on social media and brand partnerships instead. Both approaches show the holiday rather than the company: sea, sand, pools and city streets.

Naming in the sector tends to be plain. Some brands describe the product or the destination, some carry a founder’s surname, and some are built to read as a web address. Holiday ranges and sub-brands are usually named for the kind of trip they sell, such as beach, city break, long haul or cruise, so a customer can tell them apart at a glance.

Corporate pages tell a different story from the booking pages: who founded the company and where, which investors have owned it, when it listed or was sold, and, for some firms in this set, when the business collapsed or was absorbed into another group. This guide sets out what dated sources record about each brand, and marks what rests only on the company’s own word.

A yellow look and a returning globe.

The Swiss group left tour operating in 2015. TTG reported on 22 June 2015 that Kuoni Group had sold all its European tour-operating businesses, in Switzerland, the UK, Scandinavia and Finland, and the Benelux countries, to DER Touristik, the travel division of Germany’s REWE Group. TravelMole reported on 14 September 2015 that the sale had been completed, that it also covered the airline Novair and the Playitas resort in Fuerteventura, and that the new owner would keep the national brands running under their own names. German Wikipedia adds that the Swiss company Kuoni Reisen AG was renamed under its new owner in 2017. English Wikipedia says the Kuoni name is now used by separately managed businesses in the UK, Switzerland and France within REWE’s DERTOUR division. TTG reported in March 2024 that the parent had begun rebranding from DER Touristik Group to DERTOUR Group, with a new logo and design theme, and listed UK sister brands including Carrier, Journey Latin America, Jules Verne and Kirker Holidays.

In the UK the brand itself was redrawn at the end of 2024. Travel Gossip reported on 11 December 2024 that it was Kuoni’s first rebrand for 15 years, built around a “wow” yellow that the managing director called a feature colour, chosen to stand out and to add a sense of playfulness, with a “sale” red and more people in its marketing. He named Veuve Clicquot and Selfridges, heritage names that also use bold yellow, and said research had shown that some customers, families in particular, saw Kuoni as expensive or a little old-fashioned. The globe returned to the logo to signal a worldwide operator. TTG reported the next day that the yellow palette and redesigned logo were to be used in shops, brochures and online from January 2025, and that the North America by Kuoni and Alfred by Kuoni sub-brands were being folded into the main name.

For a design guide, Kuoni shows how a travel company can keep one surname for more than a century while its setting changes: a Zurich office, Bond Street, brochure racks, department-store concessions and, since 2024, a yellow identity with a globe. Compare it with Trailfinders, a London travel company that also sells tailor-made trips through its own high-street shops, and Audley Travel. For this guide we use a warm yellow, terracotta, ink and a pale sand with a clean geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kuoni’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.