Corona makes you want to go on vacation, at least arouses longing.

And that is already reflected in bookings.

"The booking trend is good," says Peter Krüger, strategy director of the travel group Tui.

“Many of our customers sit down with their families after Christmas and plan their holidays.

Although the omicron wave brought a dampener, it is already subsiding in England.

The bottom line is that business is picking up – also in Germany.”

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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Susanne Preuss

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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You can even handle a real rush in 2022, Tui hardly reduced the capacity of the self-operated hotels during the crisis.

But Krüger's task goes far beyond that.

"Of course we are planning much further into the future, we not only want to reach the level of 2019 again, we want to continue to grow," he says in an interview with the FAZ for a group that had to be supported with billions from the state and last year with it concluded negative equity, that may sound daring - not only the optimism, but also the chance of realization.

Krüger, who was born in 1976 and joined the group's board of directors as strategy chief a year ago, sees a financing vehicle found for this: a hotel fund.

In 2017 he came to Tui from Deutsche Bank with experience in investment banking.

His major project in the world of travel: Tui wants to use an independent fund to collect a lot of growth capital for new holiday homes over the next few years, which are to receive guests, for example as a Tui Blue Hotel, a Robinson Resort or a Magic Life Club.

Because accommodation of the Tui own brands should become more important.

"We are breaking new ground"

“The fund structure allows us to decouple our growth from the capital intensity of our business.

The operation of holiday hotels is Tui's core business, property ownership is not necessarily," says Krüger.

“With the first fund we are aiming for a volume of 500 million euros.

We have already recruited about half.

Investor demand is high.”

As an investor, he has pension funds and insurance companies in mind, which is by far the largest international investor market with long-term investment goals.

One of the largest German pension funds is already part of the Tui fund, but Krüger does not want to mention its name.

He has shortlisted 20 hotel projects for the fund with a term of twelve years to invest the first investor money.

The fund should be full in two or three months.

Krüger speaks of the "first fund" because he is already thinking of number two.

The first investors were particularly interested in facilities outside Europe, which fit in with hotel plans in the Caribbean, where Tui is already one of the largest operators of holiday beds, on the Cape Verde Islands and in Zanzibar.

In perspective, a second fund could follow, only for hotels in Europe - in Spain, Greece or Croatia.

"In Europe, one could even strive for a higher fund volume," he says.

More returns with hotels than competitors

“We are breaking new ground with the fund.

Nothing like this has existed before, neither in the city hotel industry nor with other travel companies.” In other words: not even at Thomas Cook.

The rival, which collapsed in 2019, launched a smaller and different vehicle for hotels in its final phase as a partner of the real estate specialist LMEY.

At Tui, it should now be a fund – registered in Luxembourg – that also bears the group in its name and has much greater financial strength.

The issuer is Hansainvest from the Signal-Iduna group.

The idea behind this is to attract long-term investors who believe in Tui's success.

According to Krüger, this is based on the idea that the group describes as “vertical integration”.