Speaking to TTG, Andrew Flintham said that while he doesn’t foresee travellers experiencing the same disruption they did last summer as travel struggled to resume normal service, businesses wouldn’t get away with offering a “flat level of service” comparable with 2022.

“People have paid more for their holidays and therefore they are – rightly – going to be more demanding of the service and the quality they receive,” he said. “That’s the challenge – everyone is going to have to step up.”

Flintham was joined by Richard Sofer, Tui’s UK and Ireland commercial and business development director, for a wide-ranging chat with TTG touching on turn-of-year trading, their thoughts on the upcoming summer season and the challenges the travel sector continues to face on the other side of the pandemic. Together, the pair spoke after Tui unveiled its "biggest-ever" winter programme, to which it has added an extra 150,000 seats and 1,500 hotels across 22 destinations for summer 2024.

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On potential disruption at airports and in-destination this summer, Flintham insisted: “I don’t think any of us are expecting a repeat of last year." He said Tui had “massively increased” levels of staffing both at airports and in-resort. “We’ve done that, our suppliers have done that and the airports have done that, so we’ve potentially over-compensated,” he said.

“Will there be some shortages in some specific places? I’m sure there will, but I don’t think it will be as much of a problem as it was last summer because everybody has been preparing. While it might not be a ‘normal’ summer, it’s not going to be anything like the challenges the whole industry faced.”

Sofer said that while management at Tui’s exclusively contracted hotels “are feeling very confident about being able to guarantee service levels” he predicted there could be “some properties around the periphery of the programme” where staffing was “a bit more challenging”.

Assessing customer demand since the start of peaks, both for the coming summer season and 2024, Flintham said Tui had “hit the ground really hard” in January and had enjoyed “the benefits of a ‘normal’ turn-of-year”.

“We’ve seen ‘normal’ customer behaviour, and I’ve seldom used that word in the past few years. We know holidays are fundamentally important to customers and they’ll do most things to make sure they can afford that holiday.”

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Sofer said Tui had focused on “confidence and affordability” during the turn-of-year sales surge, offering “really flexible payment terms, low deposits and an increased number of free kids spaces” to tempt consumers to book amid cost of living pressures.

“It’s very difficult to know what we’re comparing our performance to," he said. "Over the past four years, none have any level of comparability; in 2019, [Thomas] Cook was still around and we had different competitors. Then there was 2020, 2021 was decimated, and 2022 was a recovery year.

“We saw much-improved performance in January; that held into February and is still rolling through into March, albeit the early days. We feared there may have been a short burst at the start of January that dropped off, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised we’ve held a far more normal pattern.”

‘Fingers crossed for lates’

Sofer stressed that despite the booking trends Tui revealed on Tuesday (7 March), which showed customers were favouring shorter holidays of 10 to 11 nights instead of 14 nights, customers were not "downgrading" in terms of quality, with a strong demand for four- and five-star properties.

“Those customers choosing to shave a couple of days off their holiday are still going to the destination they want and still going to the quality of hotel they want,” said Sofer.

“We thought we might see more downtrading, but we haven’t,” added Flintham. “And those most constrained consumers will most likely fall out of the market. A lot of our customers are in those top segments where they’re not impacted [by the cost of living squeeze] or if they’re impacted, they can manage it.”

Flintham said while question marks remained about the likely impact of the gloomy economic outlook on the market, the signs were good. "The big question will be what happens when you get to proper lates – what does it look like?" he said. "Has the industry used up all those customers before it gets there or will they still be there? I don’t think any of us know, but so far there’s optimism to hope the vast majority of people are still going to prioritise that holiday purchase."

Sofer insisted the operator hadn’t rested on its laurels during the pandemic. "Over the past 12 to 18 months, we’ve been increasing our range of product, entering new destinations like Senegal, adding hugely to our cities portfolio and, through dynamic packaging, adding more frequency and far more range,” he said. “Every part of the business is performing well at the moment. It’s giving us real confidence.”

Flintham added the business was "genuinely positive about where we are and where things are going". “Turn-of-year was really good, and there’s nothing we’re seeing that’s suggesting that’s not going to continue," he said. "We need to keep our fingers crossed a little for lates, but our forward seasons are stronger than they’ve ever been. Clearly consumers are very confident – and they’re booking in significant numbers.”