Despite the Omicron virus variant, the Tui travel group is expecting strong summer business and wants to repay the first part of the state aid.
The plan is to return aid money from the Corona crisis of around 0.7 billion euros, Tui said when presenting the figures for the first winter quarter on Tuesday in Hanover.
"Demand for travel is high across all markets," said CEO Fritz Joussen.
"The way out of the pandemic is becoming increasingly clear." Customers continued to book at very short notice, many treated themselves to higher-quality trips, so that the average prices for the summer would be around a fifth higher.
In the first business quarter to the end of December, Tui achieved sales of 2.4 billion euros, around five times as much as in the first Corona winter a year earlier.
The bottom line is that the group was able to roughly halve its typical seasonal loss from 780 million to 384 million euros.
However, the minus was higher than analysts had expected on average.
The world's largest travel group recently had funds of 3.3 billion euros.
Equity was positive again at EUR 0.4 billion.
"Today we are leaner and more efficient and are becoming more profitable than before the crisis," explained Joussen.
Around 90 percent of the annual savings target of EUR 400 million will be achieved this year.
TUI had stabilized itself during the crisis with two capital increases and wants to be given the go-ahead at the general meeting to continue tapping into the capital market.