First recommended: 1976; current customer score: 81%
Inghams’ founder, Walter Ingham (pictured), is credited as “the man who took Britain skiing”. He advertised his first Christmas Party Ski Holiday to Austria in the Daily Telegraph in 1934, and thus Inghams was born.
Ingham would organise food, transport, accommodation, equipment hire and instruction for guests – inadvertently pioneering not just the ski holiday, but also the package holiday. It’s a formula that’s barely changed some 90 years later.
The company later expanded into walking holidays, and today offers a wide range of winter and summer breaks to Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia and Andorra.
Inghams featured in Which? Travel’s first tour operator ranking in its 1974 launch issue, alongside the lines of Thomson (now Tui) and Thomas Cook. Two years later was rated “significantly better than average”.
It has for the most part remained in the top half of this table ever since, and in 2019 was finally awarded Which? recommended provider status.
The operator last year renewed its focus on its summer holiday proposition with a new Inghams Walking brand, hopeful of tapping into “a gap in the market for single or two-centre” day walking holidays.
Which? said the brand was continuing to innovate, highlighting new additions for 2024 such Madeira.