A woman looks at holidays for sale in a Thomas Cook travel agent window in Bristol, England.

Hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers were stranded on Monday by the collapse of the world's oldest travel firm Thomas Cook, sparking the largest peacetime repatriation effort in British history.

The liquidation marks the end of a British company that started in 1841 running local rail excursions and grew to pioneer the family package holiday across Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East.

Running hotels, resorts and airlines for 19 million people a year, it currently has around 600,000 people abroad and will need the help of governments and insurance firms to bring them home from places as far afield as Cancun, Cuba and Cyprus.

Thomas Cook's demise, announced in the early hours of Monday after failing to secure a deal with creditors or a government bailout, sparked alarm at hotels where some customers have been asked to pay their bills again by out-of-pocket resort owners.

"I'm not going to pay for my holiday again," David Midson from England told Reuters, trying to find information at the front desk of a hotel in Roda, Corfu. "I wish I had brought a driving license, because I can't get a taxi (to the airport)."

As well as its 21,000 employees, the company's fall hit global booking websites, credit card companies, travel firms using its airlines and British high streets where its travel agents were forced to shut.

Turkey and Greece also warned their hoteliers would suffer.

Thomas Cook has been brought low by a $2.1 billion debt pile, built up by a series of ill-fated deals, that hobbled its response to nimble online rivals. It had to sell three million holidays a year just to cover interest payments.

As it struggled to pitch itself to a new generation of tourists, the company was hit by the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, one of its top destinations, and the 2018 Europe-wide heatwave which deterred customers from going abroad.

It had agreed a 900 million pound rescue package with its banks and largest shareholder, China's Fosun, but lenders asked for an additional 200 million pounds to keep it operating through the winter.

In desperate meetings held over the weekend, it failed to secure more funds, with the British government also refusing a bailout, judging it was not a good long-term bet.