27 September 2018

TUI GROUP

Pre-Close Trading Update

 

Prior to entering its close period ahead of reporting its full year results for the twelve months ending 30 September 2018 on 13 December 2018, TUI Group announces the following update on current trading.

 

Chief Executive of TUI Group, Friedrich Joussen, commented:

 

"The financial year is closing out as we expected, with the fourth consecutive year of double digit growth in underlying EBITA since the merger1. Having continued to expand our hotel and cruise offer, occupancies and yields remain high, and the number of customers purchasing holidays from us has grown in all major markets, even with the sustained period of hot weather in Northern Europe this Summer. This demonstrates the strength and resilience of demand for our holiday experiences, although as previously stated the hot weather has limited our ability to outperform. Whilst at an early stage, trading for future seasons is overall in line with our expectations. Our strong positioning as a leading holiday product provider with own distribution, as well as our balanced portfolio of destinations and markets, mean that we are well positioned to continue to deliver against our growth strategy. We therefore reiterate our guidance of at least 10%1 underlying EBITA growth in FY18."

 

1 Assuming constant foreign exchanges rates are applied to the result in the current and prior period

 

Current Trading

 

Overall, trading since our last update has remained in line with our expectations. In Hotels & Resorts our strategy of having a balanced portfolio of destinations continues to pay off, as we benefit from the return in demand for Turkey, North Africa and increased demand for Greece, as well as delivering new openings in South East Asia and the Caribbean. As expected, demand for Spain is normalising from the very high levels seen in recent years. We have a strong pipeline of hotel openings for FY19, including year round destinations such as Cape Verde, Mexico, the Caribbean islands and the Maldives, and we expect to deliver on the guidance we set out at the time of the merger of around 60 additional hotel openings by the end of FY19.

 

In Cruises, the launches of the new TUI Cruises Mein Schiff 1 and Marella Explorer this Summer have gone very well, and yield performance remains strong across our three fleets. A dry dock for the Europa means that Hapag-Lloyd Cruises wi