Informe semanal de noticias del mercado alemán elaborado por la Oficina de Turismo de Tenerife en Fráncfort
Tour Operator:
- Holiday guru extends its lead : Fvw stated that Storyclash checks for the fvw tour operators on their presence in social networks. The results for the month of July confirm a trend. After being the first organizer to make more than half a million interactions last week, the company based in Holzwickede further expands its lead in July and reaches a new all-time high of 612,209 (up 15 percent on the previous month). In second place lands Urlaubstracker (363,588 Interactions, plus 10 percent), Aida is ranked third (339,959, plus 1 percent). While Aida and Urlaubguru collect their interactions half of each on Instagram and Facebook, Urlaubstracker is completely on Facebook and is there with 312,978 even before holiday guru with 296,883 interactions. Another striking feature is that social networks, except Facebook and Instagram, play virtually no role. Youtube and Twitter do not reach a relevant share in any of the promoters in the leaderboard and are each less than one percent of the interactions.
- TUI sells German brands: The TUI Group is further restructuring its traditional tour operator business and sharpening its profile. The tourism group has concluded an agreement to divest its two German specialist tour operators Berge & Meer and Boomerang Reisen to equity investor GENUI. Hamburg-based private investment firm GENUI will acquire the two companies for around 100 million euros. The agreement was signed in Frankfurt today. Fritz Joussen, CEO of TUI Group: “The transaction will sharpen TUI’s tour operator business and our position as a vertically integrated tourism group. Berge & Meer Touristik and Boomerang Reisen pursue different business models and have a different strategic alignment. Both therefore hardly generated any synergies with TUI’s other business sectors. With the new owner, both companies will be better equipped to tap their full potential and thus have better growth opportunities. At the same time, TUI further reduces its dependence on the traditional tour operator business». The traditional tour operator business is characterized by volatility for the entire industry. TUI has taken decisive steps to align the markets in the tour operator business, and will continue to further harmonise and standardise this segment. The closing of the transaction is subject to the necessary approvals by the relevant authorities and is expected for 1 October 2019. Rengsdorf-based Berge & Meer with around 260 employees is a specialist for round trips. TUI holds a 100 per cent stake in the company through TUI Germany. Boomerang Reisen offers tailor-made long-haul trips to Oceania, Africa, and North/South America. The Trier-based company employs around 60 people. For the current financial year 2019, the two companies are expected to deliver combined revenues of around 276 million euros.
- News from the tour operators at a glance : As fvw reported, Thomas Cook opens the smallest Cook’s Club, Eurowings expands offer to Budapest and Blablabus expands the route network. The smallest Cook’s Club by Thomas Cook opened this month in Rhodes. Located on Elli Beach in Rhodes Town, Cook’s Club City Beach Rhodes features 18 boutique-style rooms. The roof terrace with pool and bar offers sea view entertainment by changing DJs who hang up there all day. In the restaurant Catina can be fed without fixed mealtimes. It is the eighth club of the organizer. Eurowings is expanding its route network to Hungary. From April 2020, the Stuttgart-Budapest connection will be operated three times a day and Hamburg-Budapest twice a day. Thus, the airline complements the existing offer of Cologne / Bonn and Dusseldorf in the Hungarian capital. For the summer of 2020 DER Touristik has unlocked further goals. These include the Canary Islands Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Tenerife and the Greek holiday destinations Crete, Rhodes, Corfu and Kos. Other destinations include Madeira, Lisbon, Porto, the Azores, Mallorca and Turkey. Package travelers can book new flights to Fuerteventura or to Hurghada from Cologne or Münster. In the intercontinental area, the early bird catalogs «Residential and Camp Mobile USA and Canada» are available for summer 2020 and winter 2020/21. Club Reisen Stumböck presents three catalogs for the winter of 2019/20: In addition to established ski destinations such as Canada and the USA, there are also less well-known destinations such as Georgia and Lapland. For the first time, the main catalog is divided into classic ski safaris and individual trips. The ski safaris range from tours in Canada to the Japanese Hakuba Valley for group travelers of up to 10 people. Special offers such as heliskiing in Alaska, Iceland and Sweden as well as catskiing in the Canadian Rockies are presented in a separate catalog. The special organizer Indigo Urlaub is expanding its Ayurveda travel program: New to the program are a two-week stay in south-Indian Varkala for solo travelers and an Ayurvedic cure in south-western Sri Lanka, where each guest is individually cooked. Those who do not want to travel quite so far can take advantage of the offer in South Tyrol: In the Eggental of the Dolomites, massages and ayurvedic-biological cuisine are on the menu. Blablabus is expanding its route network to France and the Netherlands. Since this month there is a connection from Munich to Paris and Amsterdam as well as from Berlin to Rotterdam. The Blablacar passenger platform has been offering long-distance bus travel in Germany since 24 June and meanwhile serves 38 destinations. By the end of the year Blablabus wants to connect 400 goals in Europe.
Aviation News:
- TUI: Max no-fly presses result : The ban on the Boeing Jets 737 Max has brought the travel group TUI in the third quarter a profit slump said touristik aktuell. The TUI Group’s revenue increased by 3.7 percent to 4.8 billion euros. By contrast, operating profit (adjusted EBITA) of € 100.9 million was 46 percent down on the previous year. The impact of max-grounding is estimated at 144 million euros. In addition, booking restraint continued due to the heat wave of the previous year, continuing Brexit uncertainty and significant overcapacities in the range of flights to Spain in the third quarter. While the Northern Region, with Great Britain and Scandinavia and Western Europe, are down in third-quarter sales, Central Region, which also includes Germany, posted an increase of 4.8%. Cumulatively for the first nine months of the financial year, the Central region posted an increase in sales of 1.6 percent. Group bookings for the current summer are one percent down on the previous year. However, this is an improvement over the half-year book-keeping when it was down three percent. The average prices show a plus of one percent. TUI expects the positive trend to continue, as the heat wave continued at this point in the previous year. The Group confirms the outlook for the full year 2019: As announced at the end of March, earnings will be up to 26 percent below the adjusted EBIT of the previous year of 1.177 billion euros. «Despite the hitherto challenging market environment in 2019, our operating business remains robust,» says TUI CEO Fritz Joussen. The Hotels & Resorts business will benefit from the versatile portfolio and the cruise business will continue to grow strongly. «The dependence on the classic tour operators is now significantly lower than five years ago. The conversion continues, «assures Joussen. The tour operator business will be merged faster and more effectively in the European source markets. In addition, they are systematically continuing the digital transformation and developing TUI into a global platform company.
- Joussen expects vacation flight consolidation : TUI CEO Fritz Joussen continues to see overcapacity on the routes to popular destinations such as Spain, wrote fvw.. He assumes that this will not stay that way. Even after the bankruptcy of Air Berlin, Monarch, Small Planet, Germania and other airlines, the offer of low-cost airlines and holiday fliers on the routes to the holiday destinations is still too large, said Joussen in a conference call on the quarterly figures. According to TUI calculations alone Ryanair, Easyjet, and Eurowings lose 500 to 600 million euros annually in the German market. This situation can not last permanently, therefore he expects in the medium term with a capacity reduction. Further consolidation among the providers is possible. TUI assumes the role of the «active observer,» Joussen said. Also TUIfly does not make a profit. The earnings situation of TUI airlines has even dramatically worsened due to the flight ban for the Boeing B-737max. The Group expects to incur a burden of up to EUR 300 million for the current financial year, as replacement aircraft have to be made available for the failed aircraft, which are expensive to rent in the summer season. TUI has 15 B-737max series vehicles in the fleet, and another eight should be added this year. Airline costs and greater pressure on organizer margins due to weaker demand minimized net income in the third quarter of the financial year. The situation with Thomas Cook, who initially did not sell their holiday fliers, but wanted to convert them into a new ownership of Fosun and European creditor banks, commented Joussen. «But no matter what happens to Thomas Cook: You are a big competitor and it will affect us in one way or another.» The holiday fliers are integrated into the organizers of TUI and together with them form the markets and airlines segment. Also due to the problems with the B-737max, the seasonal loss in the first nine months of the financial year in this segment increased by 78 percent to 601 million euros. Joussen therefore wants to accelerate the restructuring of the tourism business. The aim is to standardize all processes, IT systems and software development of European tour operators, from hotel purchasing and airlines to customer service and app development. «On the individual source markets, the demand continues to sell different hotel deals or excursions, but they all come from a single system,» Joussen told the fvw.
- TAP Air Portugal announces market offensive : According to tip, over the past two years, TAP Air Portugal has significantly increased the number of seats offered on the company’s flights: in 2018, the number of seats increased by 12%, while in the first half of 2019 the number increased by a further 9.3% , Now the company announces a further, extensive expansion of the connections for 2020. This is not least due to the further modernization of the fleet and an extensive investment in additional machines of the type A321LR, whose inventory will quadruple by the summer of next year. Thanks to the new aircraft, not least the involvement in flights to the USA should be significantly expanded. The number of daily connections from Lisbon to New York / JFK will be doubled from two to four, and the Lisbon-Newark and Porto-Newark routes will be served daily. The number of weekly flights to Miami increases from seven to ten, the new routes to Washington D.C. and Chicago are then offered daily. In addition, TAP Air Portugal is continuing to expand its traditionally strong business in Brazil: Thanks to the new A321LR fleet, the Natal and Belém destinations in the northeast of the country will be serviced five times instead of three times in the future. In addition to the Lisbon hub, the airport of Porto is becoming increasingly important for TAP Air Portugal. In 2017 and 2018, annual passenger traffic increased by 20% to more than 2 million; in the first half of 2019 alone, growth was 11%. Instead of the highly contested routes from Porto to Barcelona and Lyon, TAP Air Portugal is building a new airlift between Porto and Madrid, operated six times a day, which is a doubling of previous flights. In addition, the number of flights from Porto to Funchal will be increased by 50%. The flight from Porto to Newark is carried out daily from summer 2020, the connection to São Paulo increased to four weekly flights. Another day-to-day flight is being extended to include the already very successful express service between Porto and Lisbon. Passenger traffic at the hub of TAP Air Portugal is also growing steadily: between 2017 and 2018, the number increased by 8.8%; in the first half of 2019, a further 6% was added. Next year, TAP Air Portugal is also setting up a new airlift from Lisbon to Madrid and the Santiago de Compostela airline is also adding to its route network. Other destinations in Spain will also be more frequented in the future: from Lisbon to Barcelona there will be six to seven daily flights in the future, while Bilbao, Valencia and Malaga will be served two to three times a day and Seville three to four times a day. From Lisbon, capacities will be removed from the market to Stuttgart, Cologne and Basel and used on other routes. The Moroccan city of Casablanca will also receive an additional daily connection in future, making it better connected to the network of intercontinental flights. Opened only this year, the line to Tel Aviv quickly proved to be a great success, which is why TAP Air Portugal now flies twice a day to the Israeli metropolis. TAP Air Portugal’s quest for modern, efficient and comfortable aircraft is also becoming apparent on flights to Luanda (Angola) and Maputo (Mozambique): between October of this year and the year-end, the new Airbus A330neo will be phased-in for all passengers on these routes be available.