Tui group chief executive Fritz Joussen said the operator’s sales to Turkey as a whole were “up 70%” for summer 2018, adding: “It is our most important destination in summer”.
He added: “There have been very, very high prices in Spain, but they are going down a little bit. Now Turkey is coming back, perhaps it is partly customers from Spain going to Turkey again. We have a place in both markets.”
He predicted: “In a couple of years latest, high quality hotel stock in Turkey will be scarce,” adding that Tui would invest in Turkey now that demand was returning.
Other destinations were benefiting from being outside the Eurozone following the pound’s fall, he said, with Tui making “huge investment” in countries like Croatia and Bulgaria. He declined to comment on when Tui UK would return to Tunisia, saying it was a “local decision”.
Joussen was upbeat about the UK market. “Historically the UK consumer spends £1,000 on their vacation. Our market research shows that this number will stay strong.”
He explained that Tui Group was becoming increasingly globalised, aiming to fill its hotels from many different markets.
“Our investment is mainly Caribbean and South East Asia. Historically, we built and operated hotels in the Mediterranean,” he said. “The new investment generation is in long-haul areas.
“We fly to the Caribbean in summer from Europe and in the winter our aircraft go to our Canadian business; therefore we have a very good seasonal structure. More and more Americans are getting passports and their main destination is the Caribbean. Our average occupancy there is 95%.”
He added: “South East Asia is very similar because we fly there in the summer from Europe. What is still missing is the strong local market. I personally believe this role will be filled by the Japanese, South Koreans and the Chinese.”
He added that the Maldives, Thailand and Mauritius, were already attracting big numbers of Chinese guests.
