The commercial agreement, signed in 2010, had allowed all Thomson and First Choice retail shops to sell Jet2holidays product.
But Jet2holidays’ head of trade, Alan Cross, confirmed to TTG this week that Tui contacted the business shortly before Christmas to announce it was ending the agreement.
He said: “There was no surprise there. Sales through them had dwindled in just a couple of years to such a small amount it was negligible.
“It is independent agents that we focus on. From our perspective it’s business as usual.”
Cross also insisted there were no “hard feelings” towards Tui.
“We’ll of course speak to them if they want to come back. They have their strategy and that’s their business.
“If Tui’s distribution represented 40% of our business then I would probably worry, but it didn’t.”
Cross said although Thomas Cook continues to sell Jet2holidays, it is “not in significant numbers”.
“We don’t need Thomas Cook or Tui to drive or grow our business,” he added.
Martin Alcock, Travel Trade Consultancy director, said Jet2 had “muscled its way in” to the market.
“Jet2holidays isn’t at the turnover levels of Tui or Thomas Cook yet but their growth has been consistently impressive over the last few years and they’ve certainly muscled their way in.
“It’s hardly a surprise that Tui doesn’t want to give them a helping hand anymore.”
Alcock claimed that historically “around a third of Jet2’s package sales came from high street agents”, so they would “certainly notice the loss of Tui as a distribution channel”.
Meanwhile, asked about Tui’s move, a Cook spokesperson said: “Where there is customer demand we offer products which complement our own to make sure we’ve got the best choice available.”
He added: “We believe we have the best holidays on the market and our customers buy more of our own holidays from us than anything else.”
A Tui spokesperson said it would not comment on individual supplier relationships, but added: “Like all businesses we review our portfolio of operators periodically.”
Jet2holidays received record holiday bookings last weekend and into Monday.
The company saw a fourfold increase on its normal booking volumes, a “significant increase” on the peak period last year. Tui agents can still book Jet2.com flights.
