Holidaymakers do not care which company has the biggest Atol licence, according to Tui’s UK and Ireland boss, after rival Jet2holidays leapfrogged the company to top the rankings.
Last month, Atol data showed that Jet2holidays had increased its licence for 2023 to carry 5.8 million passengers, while Tui has a licence for 5.3 million.
Commenting on the Atol rankings, Andrew Flintham, managing director for Tui UK and Ireland, told Travel Weekly: “Whilst we love it in the industry, and even my boss loves it, and my boss’s boss loves it, customers don’t really give two hoots about it.
“We want to do the best job for our customers on holiday. It doesn’t matter who the biggest is, you just want to be the best.
“It’s quite simple and straightforward: we are the best and therefore we will get the customers that come to us because of that.”
He also said Tui is maintaining its market-leading position in terms of traffic to package holiday websites.
“There is no official definition of market performance or market share in our business. Most things that people talk about are either predictions or conjecture, or both,” he said, noting that Atol is a prediction of sales and Tui is always reviewing the size of its licence.
He echoed the comments of Tui Group chief executive Sebastian Ebel who said in February that Tui wants to be “the market leader not only in numbers but also in quality”.
Flintham added: “It’s no surprise that we tend to do really well in the awards when customers vote for them.
“We do really well with trust, in terms of all the metrics, in terms of brand reference, in terms of all those things that say we think we are the leading holiday company.”
He pointed out how Tui and Jet2holidays’ business models are different, highlighting how his company also sells cruising, more accommodation-only, tours and dynamic packages.
“We are pretty broad as a business…whereas Jet2 are much bigger than us on flight-only because they’re a much bigger airline than us, and then packages,” he said.
“So our business is a different shape to their business. Therefore, you’ll end up with us being that leading holiday provider, across all those different facets and attributes.
“We’re adding another 1,500 hotels…so things like that are showing that, with our flying, and third-party flying, we’re going to increase the range and the flexibility that customers can pick from.”