When First Choice started to receive offers last year for Mainstream, its package tours business, it could barely have foreseen that it would trigger a process of consolidation culminating in the UK-listed company merging with Tui, Europe’s leading tour operator.

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Roger Blitz on the merger’s implications

Peter Long, chief executive of First Choice and the designated chief executive of Tui Travel, the merged operation, saw only a future fraught with difficulty for the traditional but declining package tours market.