After his appearance on a panel discussion at the Mobile World Congress, Mittu Sridhara, Tui’s chief information officer, said disruptive technology in other sectors was having more of an impact than ever.

“Increasingly our competitors are not so much the Thomas Cooks of the world or the OTAs… it’s every industry that’s innovating and changing consumer behaviour,” he said.

“So if you look at how Uber is making life easier for how you hail a black cab, how does it apply to our industry in the transportation segment? There’s always things that we have to monitor and understand… [such as] consumer behaviour and adoption and [we have to] ensure that we are applying those principles back into the business.”

Tui Group’s most recent financial update in February showed that the share of online sales was growing across a number of key markets. The web now accounts for 40% of
all mainstream sales (up from 37% in 2013-14), 53% of UK sales (up from 50%) and 69% in the Nordics (up from 67%).

“This is all part of the bigger change at Tui. Clearly, our customers continue to move more online. We need to move with them and follow each market based on what’s happening within [it],” said Sridhara.