The transition to the new overarching Monarch brand started on Wednesday with the Avro and Somewhere2Stay brands also being replaced.
The decision comes almost a year after the company’s well-publicised financial struggles and its eventual acquisition by Greybull Capital.
The Cosmos trademark is held by Monarch’s former owners, the Mantegazza family, who still operate the now-separate Cosmos Tours brand.
As part of the move, Monarch will focus exclusively on destinations covered by its own scheduled airline and will move away from using third-party carriers.
More hotels will also be added to its tour-operating programme. Monarch’s chief executive Andrew Swaffield told TTG the decision to unify the company’s various businesses under one name was made at the beginning of the year after receiving feedback from brand consultants.
“We had a view that a single brand would be more powerful than multiple brands; that was our starting position and they [brand consultants Lippincott] validated that assumption,” he said.
“We haven’t really had people lobbying for the Cosmos name. It almost feels like it was time for it to happen. It feels like a very natural change.
“Cosmos was a very strong brand in the 70s and 80s,” he added. “I think it’s probably fair to say now that Monarch is a much stronger brand than Cosmos.”
Over the past 18 months Swaffield has made a number of changes at the group, including the elimination of charter and long-haul flights.
He said: “For us this is part of the continuation of that simplification of the business.” Swaffield added that he was not envisaging any job losses as a result of the rebrand.
In June, Monarch published results for the first half of its financial year, which showed it was making some progress on its turnaround, with pre-tax losses being reduced by 37% to £70 million.
However, the scale of the group’s financial problems over the past couple of years were revealed in its 2014 statutory accounts, which were filed at Companies House also in June, showing that the business made a £57 million pre-tax loss last year.
Swaffield insisted the good progress made by the company had continued over the summer and he still expects a return to profit this financial year.
“We’ve been delighted with the speed of the turnaround from a financial point of view and we’ve had a good year this year,” he said.
