Spain’s Balearic and Canary islands and Greece are expected to be the preferred destinations for Europeans booking long-awaited summer holidays when the travel industry reopens, according to the travel group Tui, although it will only operate three-quarters of its summer 2019 capacity.
Europe’s largest travel company said low rates of Covid infections in key locations, combined with an accelerating vaccination programme in Europe, had improved the prospects for tourism this summer.
About 2.6 million people have booked to travel with Tui over the summer, which is slightly lower than the number reported in March.
However, the company said bookings, including those from customers who had rebooked previously cancelled trips using vouchers, were more than two-thirds (69%) lower than levels in summer 2019, as a result of ongoing uncertainty about Covid travel restrictions.
Tui’s chief executive, Fritz Joussen, said he was optimistic about the prospects for summer travel, adding that the continued vaccination of its customers, combined with Covid testing and hygiene measures in resorts, would enable the safe return of holidays.
“We are now at the beginning of the expected restart. The anticipation is palpable, these are opportunities for tourism and for Tui,” Joussen said.
The German company, which announced the closure of 48 UK high street branches in March, has previously said there was strong pent-up demand for travel.
Joussen said 70% of Europeans recently surveyed wanted to travel. “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,” he said.
Tui said it had taken thousands of passengers to Mallorca, a destination popular with German tourists, over the Easter holidays, and shown that safe travel was possible during the pandemic.
It expects travel corridors to open between England and southern Europe in the coming weeks, following the lifting of travel restrictions for England from 17 May, with Portugal and Gibraltar on the “green list” of destinations that will not require travellers to quarantine on arrival back in the UK.
A decision by the German government to allow vaccinated and unvaccinated passengers to travel would also give customers security to book trips, while bringing tourism back to southern European destinations, Tui said.
The company sunk to a €1.3bn (£1.1bn) underlying pretax loss in the six months to the end of March, and an 89% fall in revenue to €716m.