The travel giant, which revealed its full-year results on Wednesday morning (8 December), said there was an “encouraging” current pipeline of 4.1 million bookings across the winter 2021/22 and summer 2022 seasons, with 1.4 million bookings taken since 3 October
But Tui added: “The increased media coverage of rising incident rates and the emergence of new Omicron variant has weakened this positive momentum, particularly for winter.”
Despite Omicron, the operator said trading “continues to be in line” with Tui’s winter capacity plans, which are currently between 60% and 80% of pre-Covid levels.
This capacity, though, could be “modified towards the lower end of our assumptions” if consumers remain worried about the new variant.
“There will be flexibility in deciding whether to offer winter programme capacity at the lower end of the range, depending on the so-called fourth coronavirus wave and possible policy decisions with regard to the Omicron variant,” explained the operator.
Tui Group chief executive Fritz Joussen insisted: “We had a successful summer season after the relaunch. The overarching trends are intact. Tui’s operating business is back and has recovered significantly in the last financial quarter of 2021.
“The first financial quarter of 2022 is already almost fully booked at 93%. This means that we are currently at 69% of the pre-crisis level capacities in the current quarter. We expect summer 2022 and the peak travel season to return to booking levels similar to pre-corona 2019.”
’Well booked’
Tui said it had “taken another step out of the crisis” during the final quarter of its financial year, up to 30 September 2021, when it was close to reaching break-even.
The company added that Easter in April 2022 was “well booked”, predominantly by the UK market, while UK bookings for May were already at 52%.
Summer 2022 was also “well booked” across Tui’s markets, with a rise of 23% in average selling prices as consumers spent more on their holidays.
Around 5.4 million people travelled with Tui in the 2020-21 financial year, as the company recorded a pre-tax loss of €2.5 billion, compared with a loss of €3.2 billion during the previous year.
Tui’s revenue was down by 40% year-on-year to €4.7 billion, as its markets were hit hard by Covid lockdowns and restrictions throughout much of the year.
