TUI Travel - Thomson Holidays & First Choice Holidays
First Choice Holidays PLC and the tourism division of TUI AG joined forces in September 2007 in a merger designed to combat the fall in sales which has resulted from the demise of the traditional package holiday. The merger created a new company known as TUI Travel which is now based in London. Existing shareholders at TUI own 51%, whilst First Choice shareholders will have 49%. Thomson Holidays is of course the other well known company involved in the merger, as the tourism division of TUI AG.

TUI Travel PLC - Merger Created A Travel Giant
The two giants of the travel industry confirm they will save around £150 million a year through the link-up and create anticipated revenue of more than £12 billion a year. TUI which operates Thomson Holidays already employs around 8,000 British staff, from a total of approximately 730 branches nationwide. TUI Travel completed a review 100 days after the review, setting TUI has set a series of new objectives as well as announcing that it is upgrading its synergy target from £100 million to £150 million per annum, to be achieved by the year ending 30th September 2010.

TUI Travel - Born as a result of changing holiday tastes
The industry has had to take notice of families now preferring to put their own holidays together with budget airlines and their own hotel bookings. As a result, only 31% of people now take a package holiday, the lowest ratio in 30 years. Package holiday sales have fallen by 14 per cent in four years in contrast to 45 % rise in people making their own plans.
In a joint statement, TUI and First Choice admitted that travel tastes had changed and that consumers demand flexibility and choice, seek new life experiences and look to access travel content through a number of points of sale, most notably the internet.
It is the internet where most holidaymakers will now make their plans, with companies like directline-holidays.co.uk leading the line in offering customers millions of holidays in a single search from a number of different tour operators.

 TUI Travel News
 First Choice Holidays News
 Thomson Holidays News