Tui’s chief executive Fritz Joussen said he was expecting a “strong rebound” in leisure travel following the pandemic, with the operator’s summer 2022 bookings forecast to reach 2019 levels.

Joussen added that travel was a “mega trend”, with its growth set to be powered by “favourable” demographics, such as people becoming healthier and having extra time and money to spend on holidays.

“Covid was a pause button and now it’s been unpaused, and we go off again,” insisted Joussen, as Tui released its full-year financial results on Wednesday (8 December).

Joussen added that tourism was a “force for good” because of the jobs it created, as well as providing education, and improving social and environmental standards.

“Without tourism, everything is worse,” he said. “None of the underlying trends have been broken by Covid.”

Tui is currently forecasting that its summer 2022 bookings will be around 90-100% of summer 2019 levels.

“Getting back to 2019 is not so ambitious - in 2019 we still had Thomas Cook,” said Joussen. “There has been consolidation in the market. Summer 2022 could be higher [than 2019] when you think about Thomas Cook. I’m quite optimistic.

“Since 2019, we have 20% of the market that has to be redistributed because 20% of the market was Thomas Cook. We will see the redistribution of that market share. In January 2020 we were up 17% versus 2019.”