Sebastian Ebel was recently back on Fehmarn, a photo posted online of the Staberhuk lighthouse, built in 1904, suggests this.

There were also a few thoughtful lines about how the construction of the Fehmarnbelt tunnel to Denmark would change tourism on the Baltic Sea island.

Changes in tourism will also keep Ebel busy elsewhere in the future.

In October, he will switch from the finance department to the chairman of the board of TUI, the largest travel group.

It has been said that he likes to spend his days off on Fehmarn, even if TUI brings many more holidaymakers to the Greek islands and even more so to Mallorca.

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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A home connection belongs to the manager from Braunschweig.

He was born there, grew up there, studied there, and the Eintracht Braunschweig sports club is an affair of the heart for him.

He was its president for twelve years until 2020, during which time he even managed to return to the first Bundesliga – if only for one season.

Professionally, he has an eye on almost the entire world, TUI lets people vacation on the Mediterranean, in the Caribbean, in Thailand and soon also in Senegal.

And there is no doubt that it was a long-cherished dream of Ebel's to rise very high in the group.

CEO Fritz Joussen uses an exit clause in his contract to withdraw early, which now clears the way for Ebel.

The Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Dieter Zetsche, certifies that

The booking numbers are currently good, despite inflation, customers are not being stopped from traveling after two years of Corona.

TUI expects to be able to build on pre-pandemic values.

The financial position is in need of improvement, although TUI announced on Friday the repayment of a 671 million euro silent participation from the federal government.

TUI mainly has debts left over from the crisis.

However, the net financial debt of 3.9 billion euros cannot be quickly repaid from current income.

The problem-solving man

Ebel should know the group and its history better than anyone else on the management floor.

He has been with TUI for most of his career.

He started in controlling in 1991, the group was still called Preussag at the time and was not only focused on travel.

In 1997 he moved briefly to the then VIAG Group, returning to the holiday business in 1998.

After the name was changed to TUI, Ebel moved to the board.

From 2008 to 2013, he worked for the ATU chain of car repair shops and for Vodafone Germany, where he worked with Joussen.

After moving to TUI, he brought him back there.

Most of the time, the two were considered a close team.

For problem cases in the TUI Reich, Ebel was the man who was supposed to get them under control.

That applied to the luxury sea voyages of Hapag-Lloyd cruises.

It applied to the Tuscany town of Castelfalfi, which was to be transformed into a holiday village.

The project was an expensive legacy left behind by former CEO Michael Frenzel.

Ebel managed to finish Castelfalfi in a slimmed down form and resell it during the pandemic.

The role of problem-solver was particularly important for the merger of the two listed parts of the group, the holding company TUI AG in Hanover and TUI Travel in Great Britain - a legacy from the pre-Joussen era that had arisen through an uncompleted takeover.

Without this step, Joussen's restructuring story at TUI could have ended prematurely, but the merger was successful.