Tui Group chief executive Sebastien Ebel said the operator would step up development of its app so it doesn’t have to "buy the customer again and again”.
“In an ideal world, 50% [of sales] would be retail, and 50% app,” he said as Tui posted its full-year results on Wednesday (11 December). However, he added retail was “so important in many months” because it was higher margin and directional.
“We get customers early and we get higher value from customers [from retail]. The rest is direct, and there will be a clear target to shift from web to app.”
He added around a third of UK sales were through agents, with “5-10%” of these coming from independent retailers.
However, Tui also said UK consumers were the most advanced in the use of its app, with 12% having used it to make a purchase in 2023/24. Black Friday app sales reached 20% of total, it said.
Overall, Tui’s app sales have risen from 5.2% in 2023 to 7.3% this year, with the remainder coming from retail and online.
Ebel’s comments come days after Tui launched dynamic packaging with Ryanair. “The first two days have been outstandingly good," Ebel said.
“We have 10-15% dynamic packaging; we should have 50%. Ryanair is the big step forward, others will follow, not just on the flight side, but also hotels.”
Tui currently sells three million dynamic packages across all of its markets, a figure that has risen by 17% year-on-year.
Ebel said new technology would be a key plank of its global expansion along with own brand products like hotels.
“The focus on the global is wider than in the past," he continued. "We will go to North America, we have gone to Asia, we have gone to Latin America, and we are doing that with a unique product – like Netflix has with its own series’ – not only with hotels [and] cruise, but also on the experience side, there is a lot of own products.”
This, he said, will be backed by bespoke IT systems. “We can go direct to the hotel, airline and named supplier, taking out the middleman to drive better prices, better availability," he explained, adding: “[The] Tui of tomorrow will be very different from Tui of today.”
