Peter Long, Chief Executive of TUI Travel PLC, commented
"We are satisfied with the progress in trading since our last update and are particularly pleased with the performance of differentiated product, which continues to book earlier, demonstrating the resilience of our business model. We are also pleased with the development of bookings and pricing in the UK, where we have outperformed the market during the key booking period in January. We have also had a particularly good performance in online sales. We believe that this outperformance reflects the trust that customers place in our market leading brands
"As anticipated, underlying operating loss for the quarter increased principally due to lower demand for North African destinations.
"Our performance remains in line with our expectations and the flexibility of our business model means that we are able to manage capacity to match profitable demand. In addition, our business improvement programme is progressing according to plan. These self-help measures, coupled with our strategy of increasing differentiated product, controlled distribution and online sales, will help us to deliver in the current challenging macro-economic environment."
