Informe semanal de noticias del mercado alemán de la Oficina de Turismo de Tenerife en Fráncfort

  • Tour Operator News

 German summer holiday bookings in April: Thanks to the late Easter holiday, German travel agents increased sales in April, according to monthly figures from IT services firm Tats. Travel agents increased their overall sales (in terms of booked revenues) by 3% last month, according to the monthly Tats travel agency monitor. The improvement was generated by a strong 11% rise in leisure travel sales, which was in turn driven by a dramatic 32% rise in cruise holiday bookings. In contrast, sales of airline tickets dropped by 2.5%. Overall, German travel agents thus had flat revenues in the first four months of this year, according to the long-running sales analysis – looking ahead overall bookings for 2018/19 tourism year (departures between November 2018 and October 2019) are down by 2.2% at present.

 TUI Group is further expanding its position as the world’s leading leisure hotelier:  According to the company’s latest press release, the Group is set to open more than 20 new hotels across eleven countries in Europe, Africa and Asia in the next weeks. Strong growth will be delivered, in particular, for the concept hotel brands TUI Sensimar, TUI Family Life and TUI Sensatori. The all-inclusive club brand TUI Magic Life will open three new resorts this Summer, and the long-standing joint venture partners Riu and Atlantica will also expand their portfolios. TUI Group currently comprises around 380 hotels and 17 cruise ships.

 Holidaycheck plans to launch own tour operator: According to FVW, the hotels evaluation portal Holidaycheck plans to lunch its own tour operator. The Holidaycheck Group created a new subsidiary called HC Touristik which will be responsible for developing in-house tour operator products. The Munich-based company has grown rapidly in recent years, but  made a slow start to 2019 with Q1 sales up by just 1.9% to €42.2 million, although this was on top of the high 24% growth achieved in the first quarter of 2018 and amid generally weak demand in Germany. However, HolidayCheck remained optimistic for 2019, predicting sales growth of 7-12% thanks to late sales and better operating profits.

  • Aviation News

Lufthansa is investing in quality and bids for Condor: Lufthansa Group continues to consistently focus on innovation. The network airlines have launched the biggest product offensive of all time and are investing a further 2.5 billion euros in new seats in all classes, a significantly larger lounge offering and the expansion of digital services. Eurowings has established itself as number three in European point-to-point traffic and is the clear number one in its home markets in this segment. Last year, Eurowings integrated 77 aircraft that had previously flown for Air Berlin and hired 3,000 additional employees.
According to FVW, Lufthansa has officially bid for Thomas Cook Group’s German airline Condor with the option of taking over all of the struggling British tourism group’s airlines. The confirmation by CEO Carsten Spohr at the company’s annual general meeting on Tuesday follows reports that Thomas Cook had set a deadline forMay 7 for offers and after weeks of speculation that Lufthansa would make a move for its former subsidiary. «We have made a non-binding offer for Condor, with the option of extending it to all Thomas Cook airlines,» Spohr said. However, he admitted it was unlikely that a single buyer would be permitted to buy all of the tourism group’s airlines due to anti-trust regulations. Thomas Cook Group put its airlines, comprising Condor, Thomas Cook Airlines UK, the Scandinavian business and the small Spanish operation, up for sale in February in an effort to raise cash to cut debts and invest in its hotels business. According to experts, Lufthansa, which already owned Condor until 2009, could combine the German leisure airline with its budget subsidiary Eurowings to create a leisure travel-focused business with a wide range of European city and beach destinations and long-haul tourist routes.

  • Hotel Business News

Expansion plans of Groupe B&B Hôtels: Groupe B&B Hôtels and its German subsidiary B&B Hotels are on a growth course. The French budget chain opened more than 50 new hotels in 2018. In addition to the core markets of France and Germany, the first hotels were opened in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal and Slovenia. This brought the total number of B&B hotels worldwide to 476 hotels by the end of the year 2018. Until 2020 it is planned to have 600 B&B hotels worldwide, including 150 hotels in Germany. Groupe B&B Hôtels announces plans to open more than one hotel per week in 2019.

 

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