Orbis (Polish travel agency)

Orbis is the oldest travel agency in Poland, founded in 1920 in Lwow (now: Lviv, Ukraine). Currently, it is the largest hotel group in Poland and Central Europe, and parent company of Orbis S.A. Capital Group, which has nine subsidiaries. Its name comes from a Latin language word , which means world.

Polish Travel Office was opened in 1920 in Lwow, and among its founders are bankers Ernest Adam, Maksymilian Liptay and Józef Radoszewski, as well as politician Wladyslaw Keslowicz, Count Aleksander Skarbek, and lawyer Ozjasz Wasser. Their target was to create a travel office with international standards of service, which would provide services for the citizens of the newly created Second Polish Republic. Orbis quickly developed, and by the year 1925 it had as many as 28 offices. In 1928 it was granted the status of a national travel agency, and in 1933, after its shares had been purchased by PKO Bank Polski, main office was moved to Warsaw. Orbis continued to prosper, by 1939 it had 136 offices in Poland and 19 abroad. It employed app. 500 travel agents, and had four hotels with 360 rooms.

The office ceased its operations during World War II, during which most of its property was looted or destroyed. After the war, the only foreign offices still operating were those in Brussels, New York City, Tel Aviv, and London. Orbis was reopened on December 13, 1944, in Lublin. In Communist Poland it was a state-owned enterprise, and in the late 1940s, it was mostly involved in inter-city bus services as well as mass meetings.

From the 1950s, Orbis took control over a network of pensions, with 5,000 beds. Furthermore, Orbis serviced sleeping and restaurant train cars. In 1951, nine top Polish hotels joined the agency. They were regarded as high-standard hotels, and enjoyed monopoly on both foreign and Polonia visitors.

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