(Reuters) -On Wednesday, holiday company TUI reported an operating loss for the third quarter because of extra costs caused by the air traffic problems in Europe. However, the company said that summer bookings were close to what they were before the pandemic.
If you take out extra costs of 75 million euros ($76.58 million) for delays in air traffic, the adjusted operating profit for the three months ending June 30 was 48 million euros. This is the first time the company has made money since the COVID-19 crisis began.
TUI runs tour operators, travel agencies, airlines, hotels, and cruise ships in vacation spots all over the world. So-called “revenge travel” is helping the company get back on its feet after the pandemic messed up the tourism industry.
In May, the German company said it expected to start making money again this year because people valued experiences more than things and were willing to pay more for more expensive vacation stays.
TUI, one of the biggest tourism companies in the world, had a smaller underlying operating loss of 27 million euros for the quarter than it did a year earlier, when it lost about 670 million euros.
Bookings for the whole group were 90% of what they would be in summer 2019. TUI said that bookings for July and August rose to 93% of what they were before the pandemic.
The company said it still thinks bookings for this summer will be almost as high as they were in 2019, even though average prices are much higher than they were three years ago.
($1 = 0.9793 euros)
