Storied Tour Operator Cox & Kings Still Smoothing Out Travel's Rough Edges
Skift Take
Longevity doesn't automatically mean success. Cox & Kings has had to adapt to the needs of 21st-century tourists and the ever-changing travel market. That it's still around after 260 years is testament to its ability to reinvent itself.
Cox & Kings, which bills itself as the longest established travel company in the world, doesn’t want to over-promise the celebrities and heads of state you might meet on one of their customized luxury adventures. But somebody at the agency likely does know where the Dalai Lama is right now. If meeting him is on your bucket list, they’ll do what they can to make it happen.
That goes as well for just about anything you might want to do on a custom trip, especially if you’re booking with Cox & Kings USA, which focuses almost exclusively on personalizing luxury vacations and streamlining executive business travel. If you’d like an insider look at Machu Picchu, they’ll find a renowned archeologist to give you a tour; if you’d like to hang out with a fellow art collector over cocktails at their home in an exotic locale, they can plan that, too.
Some might find it surprising that Cox & Kings, which now does most of its business in India, began as an agent of the British army during the Crown’s campaign to colonize the Indian subcontinent.
Richard Cox, originally a secretary in the British army, started the business in 1758, when his boss appointed him the army company’s “agent.” At the time, agents were a key third-party to any British military unit, doing all the logistical work that keeps a regiment humming, including making sure soldiers got paid; sourcing clothes and weapons; managing the company band; handling the mail; and hunting down little luxuries requested by officers.
[caption id="attachment_303304" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Richard Cox[/caption]
The clockwork efficiency of Cox’s agents was instrumental in helping the British Army occupy their colonial territories and negotiate among competing forces in those campaigns. When British East India Company mercenaries ransacked an Indian fortress using guns and supplies they stole from the British army, for instance, Cox negotiated reparations: The company agreed to pay for the guns.
In World War I, Cox & Kings — then called Cox & Co. — became a bank and insurance agency for British soldiers, taking their place as a cultural institution: It was in their vaults that Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ famed sidekick, kept his records of all the cases Holmes couldn’t solve.
The company kept expanding for several years, opening several offices in Egypt and what was then Burma. They became Cox & Kings in 1922, when they bought the Henry S.
