Political unrest in Egypt and Tunisia will cost TUI up to £30 million, the company said in a trading update today.
The travel giant said it was able to react quickly to lessen the impact of the troubles thanks to its flexibility business model.
“Following the political events in Egypt and Tunisia our experience has been that customers continue to want to go on holiday with us, albeit to alternative destinations,” said chief executive
Peter Long.
“The flexibility we have in our business model has allowed us to actively re-shape our programmes across all our source markets to satisfy this demand and we have moved significant capacity to a number of other destinations including Spain, Greece and Turkey.
“We are also working closely with our suppliers in Egypt and Tunisia to ensure that the programmes which are on sale offer extremely good value for our customers.â€
He said differentiated products were performing well, with booking volumes up 18%, 52% and 23% in the UK, Nordics and Germany respectively.
“In spite of the disruption in Egypt and Tunisia, recent booking volumes are ahead of the prior year in all markets with the exception of the UK and France which were the two markets most affected by the situation,†said the trading update.
“Bookings outside of these destinations since our previous update are down 1% for the UK and up 11% in France against a tough comparative period in the prior year.â€
By Bev Fearis
