Earlier this year the firm revealed plans to gradually replace individual country brands with the overarching Tui name.

Long said the firm was still planning to doing this and hard started the exercise in its Dutch business, where it currently uses the name Arke for its tour operator.

Long said: “We’ve started in our Dutch business so it’s going well and the programme’s on track. This is an exciting development and as we roll out by source market there will be a lot of learnings. But we see it very, very positively, building a global brand is absolutely the right thing for us to do and we’re very committed to it.”

Long confirmed that the Thomson name would eventually go but that the fate of First Choice had yet to be sealed.

“We haven’t made a decision yet in terms of First Choice but we did in respect of Thomson,” he said.

Thomson (then owned by Tui) and First Choice came together in a merger in 2007.

In 2011, Tui Travel, as it was then known, announced it would be rebranding all its stores as “Thomson featuring First Choice”.

Long had served as chief executive of First Choice prior to the merger.