Tui reports doubled bookings in April with ‘strong summer’ ahead – and higher prices

Europe’s biggest holiday company says bookings for summer trips are soaring – and reports prices are 22 per cent higher than for summer 2019.

The Anglo-German giant, Tui, has reported a massive loss of €1.3bn (£1.1bn) for the first half of its financial year, covering October 2020 to March 2021.

Yet it reports increasingly strong sales for the summer of 2021 and, especially, 2022.

New weekly holiday bookings doubled in April, and new bookings for summer 2022 are up 109 per cent since March.

But the company’s 2.6 million bookings for summer 2021 represent a 69 per cent decline on the comparable point in time for summer 2019.

The chief executive, Fritz Joussen, said: “Holidays are at the top of Europeans’ wish lists after the months of the pandemic.

“Bookings and booking trends show holidays in the Mediterranean, in the Aegean and on a ship will be possible again for many families in the coming weeks.

“Currently, around 70 per cent of those surveyed want to go on holiday.

“England in particular offers potential when new travel corridors to southern Europe open there too in the next few weeks.

“European destinations, particularly Greece, Canaries and Balearic Islands, are ahead in preference.”

The rise in average selling prices is attributed to a higher proportion of all-inclusive holidays.

UK holidaymakers can go abroad for the first time in 19 weeks starting on Monday 17 May – but Portugal is the only mainstream holiday destination on the UK government’s “green list”.