By Michiel Willems
Holiday giant Tui has revealed a £63m hit from the recent travel chaos that crippled airports and led to flight cancellations and lengthy delays.
The firm said its customers were impacted by about 200 flight cancellations in May and June, in particular due to woes at Manchester Airport amid staff shortages.
Tui remained loss-making in the three months to the end of June due to the costs of the airport disruption, reporting third quarter underlying pre-tax losses of £23m in its third quarter.
This still marked a big improvement on the £566m underlying loss suffered a year earlier thanks to the recent rebound in travel demand.
Tui said that with the airport disruption impact stripped out, it would have reported underlying earnings of £41m in its third quarter – its first profit since the pandemic struck.
Sebastian Ebel, chief financial officer and designated chief executive of Tui Group, said: “Although the entire European airline sector continues to face challenges, we have successfully ramped up our business with a significant increase in demand and achieved a good third quarter.”
He added: “We are consistently tackling the operational challenges of the restart.
“We want to offer our guests the usual high Tui standards of quality and service.
“The topics of quality and customer experience are, therefore, at the top of my agenda.
“To this end, I will engage in intensive dialogues with the destinations, retail, but also with system partners such as airports and airlines.”
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