By Joanna Plucinska
LONDON (Reuters) – The boss of Europe’s largest tour operator, TUI, said on Friday it would use partner airlines like Ryanair to carry passengers when it is facing strong demand, enabling it to remain conservative on its own airline schedule.
Despite the continuing post-pandemic demand for travel, a number of airlines have had to limit capacity growth targets because of delivery delays from plane makers, which are still grappling with supply-chain challenges.
“If you look at the package model, we are conservative in capacity, we envisaged the market would be more competitive this year,” TUI CEO Sebastian Ebel told reporters in London.
Competition from easyJet and British Airways in the packaged-holidays businesses has grown across the European market.
“We want to sell with a good margin, at times where there is oversupply we will benefit from dynamic access to these suppliers,” Ebel said.
In terms of demand, he said Turkey, once a popular cheap destination for British and European tourists, was becoming less so due to higher costs.
GROWTH
TUI wants to expand beyond its packaged-holiday business, becoming more resilient through a wider offering of amusement and experience packages via an app.
Ebel compared the business model to that of U.S. internet giant Amazon.
“They started with books, and then they grew in all kinds of other products. Our core is leisure, but it’s not only sun and beach, it’s everything about leisure,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of the roundtable.
He added that the company wanted to expand its offering in more distant destinations like Southeast Asia, China and, eventually, Latin America.
“We are building a portfolio where we don’t depend on one market or two markets – we can depend on a lot of markets,” he said.
(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska; Writing by Muvija M; Editing by Kate Holton and Philippa Fletcher)
