“TUI has recorded a decline in demand for Turkey, with summer 2016 bookings to that destination currently down by around 40 percent. However, the integrated business model and own hotel content has enabled TUI to act quickly to respond to these changes and offer customers alternative destinations. TUI’s own hotels in destinations outside Turkey such as Spain and in particular the Canaries are benefitting from this shift in demand.”

So says a statement for the first quarter in the new financial year 2015/16 from The TUI Group, the world’s leading tourism group, operating in around 180 destinations across the globe, with 30 million customers, 300 hotels, 13 ships, 140 medium- and long-haul aircraft and 76,000 employees who turned over 20.0 billion euros.

In TUI Nordic are trademarks Fritidsresor, Star Tour Danish, Norwegian Star Tour, Finnish Finnmatkat and TEMA, Nazar, Wonder Cruises and airline TUIfly Nordic.

“Germans turned their backs on summer holiday bookings in December with a dramatic 8% decline. The drop in the final month of 2015 came as demand weakened dramatically following the terrorist attacks in Paris. In financial terms, German travel agencies had an €83 million ‘gap’ in revenues compared to December 2014. The 8% fall in December means that overall cumulated sales for summer 2016, which made up 65% of total sales last month, are now down by 6% compared to one year earlier. Bookings for package holidays were most impacted. In terms of destinations, bookings slumped for Turkey, Greece, Egypt and Tunisia and “could not be compensated” by increases of more than 20% for the Canary Islands, Portugal and Germany,” says fvw.com news.

Scandinavia

But what about the demand for summer travel in other companies in Scandinavia:

Magdalena Ohrn , Head of Information, Ving, Sweden:

“Summer sales are going really well for us. We are about 10 percent over the booking situation for the summer, compared to last year at this time.

This summer, Croatia is a real rocket:
Croatia is hot at Ving. This summer will increase the volume to the country by 80 percent, and there will be new destinations, new hotels and more departure airports.
Wing now offers 17 destinations and nearly 90 hotels in Croatia. Split is the direct charter flights from Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Jönköping, Karlstad, Norrköping, Växjö, Örebro and Copenhagen.

Also Mallorca has fine bookings

Generally speaking, Spain is more popular than ever, in addition to Majorca and the Canary Islands, Malaga is very popular.

Turkey has been a little slower than, say, last summer, but sales have been loosened in recent weeks.”

Glenn Bisgaard, Head of Information, Apollo, Denmark:

“Our load factor for summer 2016 sales is in percentage in line with our 2015 load factor. However we did increase our Danish programme around 10% year on year, so overall our sales for this summer is ahead of last year. The main reasons are a combination of an extended programme to Greece, a large number of repeaters and a lot of customers that remember the poor Danish summer weather last year.

Among the popular summer destinations this year we find Greece, Spain and Croatia. Turkey started slowly, but is now picking up speed together with Bulgaria,” says Glenn Bisgaard.