Competition from online platforms and artificial intelligence – the high-margin in-house sales of Europe's largest travel group are under pressure. Management is accelerating the restructuring.
Benjamin Jacobi will be responsible for marketing the group's hotels and resorts and will connect the global brands more closely with Tui's own sales channels.
Tui's own sales with websites, apps and travel agencies are under pressure from artificial intelligence and online platforms such as Check24, which attract customers with cashbacks.
Tui plans to primarily sell its own products such as hotels and cruise ships through its own sales department in order to stand out from the competition and secure margins.
The operating result in the markets and airlines segment fell to minus 17.4 million euros in the third quarter, impacted by geopolitical crises, and Tui is negotiating with Check24 about the regulation of commission payments to customers.
Frankfurt. It is one of those personal details that says a lot about a company's current strategy. As of this month, Benjamin Jacobi, previously managing director of Tui Germany, has been responsible for marketing the group's hotels and holiday resorts. Jacobi is to integrate global brands such as Robinson, Tui Magic Life, Tui Blue and The Mora more closely with the group's own sales channels.
Because Europe's largest travel company is under pressure. Today, vacationers can put together a trip quickly and easily with the help of artificial intelligence. Large online platforms such as Check24, Holidaycheck or Ab-in-den-Verurlaub are attracting more and more people to their websites. They entice you with so-called cashbacks (repayments).
Both developments are disrupting Tui's own sales channels - the websites, the app and the travel agencies. They are important for the group. Here he can maintain direct contact with the customer; this is where the highest margins are. The Tui leadership is trying to counteract this.
Management has been restructuring the company for months. The goal of CEO Sebastian Ebel: Tui sales, especially the group's tour operators, should primarily sell the group's own products in the future. With its own hotel brands and cruise ships - this is the calculation - the company can stand out from the competition and secure its margin. She's under pressure. When Ebel and CFO Mathias Kiep present the figures for the financial year ended at the end of September on December 9th, they will have to report a decline in operating results for the first time since the pandemic.
The past few years have been turbulent for Tui. After the company was saved from collapse during the pandemic with government aid totaling 4.2 billion euros, the travel group recovered faster than expected. Since 2022, the adjusted operating profit has increased year after year - from 409 million to 1.4 billion euros in the 2025 financial year.
In 2026 the curve will probably point downwards again. Originally, profits were supposed to increase by seven to ten percent. Management now only expects a result of 1.1 to 1.3 billion euros. Our own forecast had to be adjusted twice this year. The Iran war and the consequences of a severe hurricane in Jamaica ruined the plans. The two events impacted the operating result in the first nine months of the 2026 financial year by 81 million euros.
Without these special charges, the nine-month result would have exceeded the previous year's figure. But the geopolitical crises are fueling a development that has been evident for some time: customers are paying more attention to prices, are more cautious and are increasingly only booking shortly before the start of their trip.
This is a problem for a tour operator like Tui because it makes planning difficult. With its sales, Tui has to balance a complex value chain that extends from airplanes to hotels to cruise ships. An example: Simply sending your own aircraft to destinations that promise a higher return is not possible. Then your own hotels remain empty.
How unsettled customers are can be seen in the so-called booking update that Tui published on September 22nd. According to this, sales in the Markets and Airlines segment, which essentially includes the company's own tour operators and airlines, were seven percent below the comparable previous year's value. In the third quarter, the division even slipped into the red with an operating result of minus 17.4 million euros (previous year: plus 49.7 million euros).
It's not just Tui that feels the demand for holidays is changing. Marcus Schnabel, head of the holiday airline Sunexpress, which focuses on Türkiye, reported on October 20th that the airline's customers were now booking a little more in advance again. “It’s currently six to eight weeks,” the manager told journalists in Frankfurt. But he admitted that the trend towards short-term bookings will last longer than expected. Not only that. Schnabel said: “People want to travel and do travel, but if in doubt, for a shorter period of time.”
Because many things in people's everyday lives have become more expensive, money for vacations is no longer as easy as in previous years. In addition, travel has become increasingly more expensive since the pandemic. People are looking for cheap offers, also with the help of artificial intelligence. You can have your own travel package put together and booked on your PC at home - without contacting the tour operator.
Or they go to online platforms like Check24. With their wide reach, they are an important sales channel in tourism. Their growing importance is now seen as a threat in the industry. In particular, the practice of luring customers with high cashbacks has long been an annoyance for organizers. The repayments are largely paid from the commissions that organizers such as Tui generally offer - for example to travel agencies for their brokerage costs. However, unlike Check24, the offices cannot simply pass on the commissions to the customers. They need the money to secure their existence.
Tui is now trying to counteract this. Discussions with Check24 have been ongoing for weeks about the additional contracts that regulate these commissions. Management is not changing the basic contracts that stipulate that Check24 is allowed to sell Tui products. Check24 is too important as a sales channel for that. The conversations shouldn't be easy, as we hear in the industry. Tui itself does not want to comment on the ongoing negotiations, only confirms that they are taking place.
The industry is following the case with interest. Many would like to restrict or completely prevent the passing on of commissions to customers. The ship tour operator Aida tried this, but failed in the second instance in court. The case concerned the holiday agency S-Markt & added value, a company in the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court sees Aida's attempt to ban the passing on of commissions as an antitrust violation. Now Tui is trying to solve the problem through negotiations - the outcome is open.
