Speaking on Tuesday evening at a press event in London, Andrew Flintham said now was “the time to look forward” as he discussed how the world had changed over the last 20 months.

He stressed one of the key trends was the customer desire for flexibility, with many wanting to book online or speak to a travel advisor “at a time of their choosing and not necessarily in a physical location or a shop”.

“We started our journey to reshape our retail estate back in 2019,” Flintham said. “We’ve obviously had to reshape it quite dramatically through the pandemic but we believe this trend will only grow as we go forwards”.

He acknowledged that “we know speaking to a real life human is extremely important and we’ve seen the value of this over the last 20 months”, but added: “Our Tui advisors are now about inspiring our customers and supporting them with care and the logistics about their holiday and less now about the physical selling of holidays.”

Flintham said “how people travel, when people travel and why people travel” are the questions Tui “ask ourselves everyday and will ultimately drive us to look at how we address flexibility in the future”.

He said this would also “drive how we prioritise how we sell, how we distribute our holidays". "Our distribution model relies on a direct Tui to customer relationship and we believe this strength will only grow over time."

However, Flintham said Tui was still committed to working with third parties. “We have a strong brand. But it’s incredibly trusted and well known – customers want to engage with us on a one to one basis.

“That’s not saying we won’t be working with third parties because we will. However more and more people are doing that direct 121 relationship.”

Tui announced in July 2020 that it would close 166 shops due to the pandemic – nearly a third of its total. In March this year it closed a further 48 retail stores across the UK.

Katie McAlister, chief marketing officer for Tui’s Northern Region, admitted the group had spent more on its marketing for peaks this year in part due to its reduced retail footprint.

“We’re spending more on advertising this year because we’ve got fewer shops so we need to get the message out there,” she said. The campaign, which has already been launched, is designed to “rekindle the wanderlust in people”, McAlister added.

Sustainable ambitions

Elsewhere, Flintham said the “most important trend” for Tui would be a focus on sustainability. “We’ve been looking at this for over 30 years," he said. "But it’s been a key focus of ours and will always remain so.”

He admitted that as the "managing director of the largest travel company in the UK, with an airline and a cruise line, I’m not going to stand here today and say our fundamental activities don’t give us some challenges in this space".

“But we have to do everything we can to reduce our impact and help our customers to make the most sustainable choices," he continued. “Clearly we have to do more."

Flintham added Tui now now working on a new sustainable strategy that would be "its most ambitious yet". He promised more details would be released about the strategy soon.