Tui optimistic after losing almost £5m per day

‘We expect summer 2022 and the peak travel season to return to booking levels similar to pre-corona 2019’ – Fritz Joussen, CEO, Tui

Off-limits: RIU Palace Bavaro in the Dominican Republic, which was on the UK red list for months (Tui)

Europe’s biggest holiday company lost £4.7m per day in the year to the end of September – but its boss is optimistic about the coming year.

Tui has announced losses of £2.01bn (£1.72bn) for the 12 months beginning in October 2020 as Covid restrictions devastated the travel industry.

But Fritz Joussen, chief executive of the Anglo-German firm predicted: “We expect summer 2022 and the peak travel season to return to booking levels similar to pre-corona 2019.”

He said the latest travel restrictions imposed by the UK had had an impact but “not as high as I had expected”.

Mr Joussen told The Independent: “Fortunately now it is the season when it is the lowest for bookings and the lowest travel.”

But he said: “In all other countries [demand] is better than in the UK.”

Across Europe, the current quarter, ending on 31 December, is “almost fully booked” with just 7 per cent unsold.

Tui carried only 5.4 million passengers in the past year 2021, less than 20 per cent of 2019 levels. But it already has 4.1 million bookings for the current financial year.

In the six months from October 2021 to March 2022, Tui is currently planning for capacity to be between 60 and 80 per cent of pre-Covid levels.

“There will be flexibility in deciding whether to offer winter programme capacity at the lower end of the range depending on the so-called fourth corona wave and possible policy decisions with regard to the omicron variant,” the annual report says.

The firm says people are spending significantly more, with average selling prices up 15 per cent for winter and 23 per cent for next summer.

Tui operations in Continental nations including Germany, France, Poland, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands “report positive quarterly earnings for the first time since the start of the pandemic”.

Mr Joussen said: “We had a successful summer season after the relaunch. The overarching trends are intact.”

The UK continues to be an outlier, with increasingly complex and expensive travel restrictions introduced in response to concerns about the omicron variant.