Good morning, and welcome to today's TUI Group Q3 results call. My name is Seb, and I will be the operator for your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A session, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. I will now hand you over to Nicola Gehrt, Group Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Seb, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to our third quarter 2026 results presentation here from the TUI Group campus in Hanover on this wonderful summer's day. My name is Nicola Gehrt, and I am Group Director Investor Relations, and I am delighted to be joined for the presentation by our Chief Executive Officer, Sebastian Ebel, and our Chief Financial Officer, Mathias Kiep. Today, we are pleased to present to you a resilient set of Q3 results, highlighting the strengths of our business in this challenging geopolitical environment. Following the presentation, we will be opening the floor for the Q&A. With that, I have the pleasure to handing over to Sebastian.
Thank you, Nicola. A very warm welcome also from my side and, of course, from Mathias with this beautiful picture of our hotel in Santorini. When we, 12 months ago, presented our outlook, our guidance, we assumed record profits, and we had excellent five months till the war in and with Iran started, which had direct impacts. The two TUI Cruises ships stuck, the repatriation cost for the Middle East, for the Far East, the fuel impact. Also for a time period, three months less bookings, especially, of course, Middle East, also Far East, but also to some of the Eastern Mediterranean countries. This we do see in the second half of this year. The good development is that we now can see that business is coming back. It is normalizing, and we have seen strong weeks.
What we also see is that our transformation is well underway and supported the result which we can present today. That said, the Q3, roughly EUR 6 billion revenues, more than 5% below last year. EBIT down EUR 86 million. It is positive, which was not the case a couple of years ago, but Mathias will go more into the details before. If we look into the nine-month numbers, if we take out the direct one-offs, we are still above last year. If we take them into account, we are EUR 40 million down and with a revenue 1.5% less. So that is why we say a very resilient nine months. To just remind you, the TUI-specific direct one-off EUR 60 million, the Iran war and the two ships, the repatriation, and which is almost forgotten, the EUR 21 million Jamaica hurricane cost.
And as I said, suffering from high fuel cost, the Eastern Mediterranean softness, and consumer caution. Having said that, and seeing that the business is coming back, bookings are coming back considerably, we are able to reconfirm the guidance EUR 1 billion to EUR 1.4 billion. If we go into the details, Hotels & Resorts stable, we had less occupancy, mainly triggered by the Middle East impact. Stable rates, slightly bigger offering.
If we take the Jamaica impact out, we are almost on the same level. Cruises, very strong. If we wouldn't have had the two ships stuck in the Middle East, it would have been even up compared to last year. Now we are slightly below, and we are in the nine-month, we are significantly above. What is really amazing is if we take the two ships out, occupancy is above last year and prices are also very strong.
By the way, this is not only true for TUI Cruises, it's the same for the U.K. business, Marella. TUI Musement, strong despite less customers. We are able to sell more products to customers, and especially own produced products where we have a higher margin. If we go into the Markets + Airline space, we lost EUR 65 million compared to last year, which is, in this circumstance, probably a resilient, at least from our point of view, resilient result.
With the impact we discussed almost on the same level like last year. Occupancy still with 91% at a reasonable number. Upsales are growing. We have seen that the U.K. positive, but a decline Germany because of the significant long-haul business, which was not there, was negative and Western region is slightly improving. If we look what have been also on the main, what happened with our main initiatives to build the TUI of tomorrow. We are more and more differentiating between the core value TUI products, the differentiated product with our strong brands, with our airline, from the Dynamic Packaging produced products.
This has worked extremely well in Germany with ltur, and therefore on this infrastructure, we have launched Sundeals last week to give people the right answers if they want to have a differentiated TUI product or a dynamic package, very price-attractive product there. Also supported by the strengthening of our sales approach with our app. We now have integrated semantic search, which has a real shift in conversion. We are rolling that out till the beginning of next calendar year to all the other markets. So a very good development.
We have built the connections to the Large Multimodal Models, where we do see good conversion and a very attractive sales channel, including the integration into the social media. We just started with our loyalty program in the Nordics, so the Scandinavia plus Finland, and very recently in the U.K. and Ireland. Great success, and that should strengthen our TUI ecosystem to keep the customer with all the benefits they can achieve in our ecosystem and make them to even more loyal customer.
One of the most important projects we have is the commercialization of our airline, and I'm just saying airline, not any more airlines, because operationally it's now one airline with all the efficiency gains we see. Now, from the marketing sales side, we will act as one commercial airline with a full impact on summer 2027 when it comes to network, when it comes to sales activity. This is a major breakthrough because the right combination between seat-only, third party, and own customer is adding a lot of value.
When we look at holiday experiences, we had the successful start naming of Mein Schiff Flow. Outstanding NPS. I cannot remember having seen that in any other business before of 95. So customers are really happy with it. It is fully booked out. Occupancy levels above 100% because of the beds for the kids. What we brought into the market also for the foreseeable future is selling extremely strong. We are believing in carbon neutrality and emission reduction. Therefore, we will start operation now with two new-built LNG ships. Not with fossil LNG, but with bioLNG, out of biogas. Therefore, we can reduce the CO2 footprint to almost 100%, 95%. It is also very, very important.
On the hotel side, yes, we have the one or the other where we have invested in asset. We will open a Robinson Club on Cape Verde next spring, the year after in the eastern part of Africa, Zanzibar. The main growth comes from management hotels under the TUI BLUE brand. Now we have started business in cities, not for business traveler, but for tourists. These are leisure hotels. We are starting with Seville and Lisbon. We will roll out that to all major city as the brand is well-recognized, and we can give value to the hotelier and to ourselves. So a lot of things of transformation in TUI, therefore, we are looking forward to the remaining part of the year and to the coming year. After the prosa, Mathias, the numbers.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Sebastian, and a very good morning. Let me just summarize the quarter and then summarize the EBIT bridges for three months and nine months before I would then share, as usual, details on P&L cash flow and adapt. Thereafter, Sebastian will cover bookings, and we will talk about the resulting guidance once more.
When I look at the quarter and the nine-month year to date, from my perspective, in summary, this is a very robust and resilient result, despite a challenging market environment and despite the specific TUI challenges that Sebastian has just described. Again, that you also know from our Q2 result. This quarter, as a result, supports well our guidance of EUR 1.1 billion to EUR 1.4 billion profit.
I think what is important, what is important to me is that also the elements below EBIT, the financial profile, very much supports our journey. This is something which is in line with our initial expectations, even prior to the situation in Iran, which I think is very pleasing. As you said, Sebastian, this is again a positive third quarter. It is also a positive nine months. At the same time, this result, you probably know this as well, is in line with 2024 for the quarter and is significantly better for the operational profit for the 9 months in 2024. So I think that is good in order to put this into perspective. In summary, as you see from the waterfall and holiday experiences, slightly below prior year.
If you take out the direct impact of the Strait of Hormuz on TUI Cruises, then that would be in line with prior year broadly. I think if you go through the segments, Cruises, as Sebastian Ebel described, continues to perform outstandingly well, both in the U.K. and in the German market. Hotels & Resorts is in line with the quarters before, so very strong and good results.
At the same time, the super profitability that we saw in the prior years, we currently don't see because of the situation in Mexico, where we see market softness. It's not, let's say, a structural difference, but it's a bit of market headwind in one region, and TUI Musement with this very continuous improvement. Naturally, Markets + Airline hit the most by the booking environment, at the same time supporting extremely well our Hotels & Resorts and Cruise TUI Musement business.
Just anecdotally, if you look at the result in Turkey, what we call gateways to the market overall is down, and our revenue intake in the Hotels & Resorts for Turkey is actually up. That is how well the vertical integration works. The picture for the nine months, as described, is even showing that without these direct costs that TUI has to carry this year, we would be up.
Again, a result of this very strong winter. I think that is important because, also the market prior to Iran was not very strong, was soft. In this environment, we created an actually very good result. Now, of course, with this direct impact and with the impact indirectly on bookings, fuel price, et cetera, the geopolitical events had, we are below. Again, this is more than double the result that we had in 2024.
Now, when we look at P&L cash flow and balance sheet to conclude the quarter, I'm very pleased that everything below EBIT is in line with our expectations and our plans. We can effectively reconfirm everything that we saw at Q2. In particular, interest is expected to be at the lower end, and the Q3 interest expense in the nine months more than support this so far. Then if you look at EPS, again, a positive EPS in the third quarter, which is something which is very important to our financial structure.
Then on cash flow, again, we see a similar picture that then is also reflected on the balance sheet. Structurally, more investments offset by less lease and asset financing amortization, less pension costs, and less interest costs. At the same time, what you then see on a net basis, other than earnings, is working capital, which is a natural result of the booking profile that we currently have. This is as of June 13. Naturally, the positive booking environment, as Sebastian Ebel will mention and summarize in a second, will have a positive impact on that.
At the same time, this is naturally behind last year, and that is something that we currently then also see as a result on the balance sheet. If you go to the balance sheet structure, then net cash is lower, and that is a one-to-one reflection of what we see in the booking intake and the result of the working capital profile. So effectively, seasonality only rather than structural impacts. The other comment on the balance sheet is that the intake on the aircraft side is according to plan.
You see a bit more asset financing, a bit less leasing. We take profit from the very supportive direct financing market there in our credit quality. At the same time, the Boeing delivery portfolio is something which is in plan and which is impacting, naturally, our balance sheet in the way you see it here for the third quarter. I think that is overall, again, a very robust Q3. Again, profitable for Q3 and the nine months. With that, very supportive to our full year guidance.
Thank you, Mathias. Trading and outlook. As said, we had quite a challenging, tough month, March, April, May into June. We have seen now, since the last four, five, six weeks, a very different business for summer and winter. If we look into Hotels & Resorts, we see a strong average daily rate. We have seen a slight increase in capacity, and occupancy is now 3% behind last year.
Before, when we had the same number three months ago, it was significantly higher. So we are catching up here. On Cruises, occupancy, as said, amazingly on the same level, same very high level. Also rates are up while we have 12% higher capacity. TUI Musement is in line with what we have seen before, very robust business. When it comes to Markets + Airline, we have improved by 1%, now to 6%.
If we look into the last weeks, we have seen an encouraging momentum. The last week and this week again is better than the week, four or five weeks ago. So the momentum is gaining speed, and you have to see that in light that we voluntarily cut risk capacity because otherwise we thought we would get into the significant price war we have seen in the market.
So capacity and demand is now aligned by this decision to reduce risk capacity. ASP are holding up well, which has been also very important to offset inflation. As I said, the last four weeks trading encouraging, is very encouraging. Booked revenue up 7%. That, I say, also surprised me because the weather, with the heat wave now lasting for two months, was not what I had expected. So that is a good development.
Winter started slow, but we have seen the same momentum now also for winter, and it is still quite a long time. Summer lasts till October, winter starting in November. So we are confident that we will see a good winter. What we should have in mind when we look at these numbers, we always had a strong long-haul business.
The U.S. business is significantly down because of the political situation. Middle East is zero. Because with the package regulation, it has been not allowed to sell to it. Also, the Far East has been significantly impacted because of the very high flight rates. Then we had some destinations like Egypt and Turkey and Cyprus, where we traditionally have been strong, which was very much impacted during these three weeks in order intake. This now has been normalized and that we are looking forward with optimism.
This clearly shows it that we have seen after 14th of June, when the first ceasefire was announced, a resilient and improved intake. The running week is doing extremely well. So that is why we expect that the risk capacity and the demand is in line. Yes, of course, last-minute margins are less, but they are supporting very much our guidance. That led to the clear message. We can confirm the EBIT guidance. Mathias, some more details from your side.
Yes. Thank you. On the segments we talked, what I think, again, to highlight in this call is adjustments, net interest in line with what we guided as modeling assumptions in the last quarter. Net investments, and that is something you also saw from Q3 and nine months results, we reduced. So in line with the efforts to effectively bring in countermeasures against the developments in earnings. We now see that we can reduce that to a level of EUR 810 million to EUR 830 million this year from a prior range of the lower end of EUR 860 million to EUR 900 million. The rest of the guidance and the modeling assumption remains unchanged. I think important comment, because I get the question a lot, is on net debt.
I think naturally, we already talked about an increase in net debt this year because of the Boeing deliveries and that adding more lease and asset financing liabilities on balance sheet. Now, question will be: What is working capital doing end of the year? You have seen what is the nine-month position. That is naturally the peak, so the impact will naturally per 30th of September lower than that. It will be a product of what is now the last week's booking development, what is October and what is the incoming winter. So there is a bit of volatility, which is more than we usually would have at that point in time. I think we have our own view on that.
At the same time, on a net basis, we would say there is not a material change of our corridors, but at the same time, there will be an increase of net debt versus last year. I think that is something which I wanted to bring across in this call as well, with a view to the 3rd of September. With that, Sebastian, I think that is on the financial side for you to summary.
Thank you, Mathias Kiep. As said, when we look at what we wanted to achieve, we are personally disappointed. We are happy that we have seen in this extraordinary market circumstances, have seen and can present a resilient result, especially looking forward for the 12th month. This resilient result was and will be, of course, the result of cautious capacity planning. It was more profit against growth and because of the transformation.
Therefore, seeing now that the transformation, which by the way, includes significant cost reductions, will bring us well-positioned when business and demand will return. Therefore, it is our commitment to deliver sustainable growth and improved shareholder returns. Maybe the good thing is with this unexpected event that we had to be more drastic in what we do when it came to cost, when it came to transformation.
Looking even more intensively where we do invest, how we even better steer into our own assets. What supports that is not only a great finance organization here, but also that we brought all the activities under one head, our new COO, Marco Ciomperlik, and that has helped us, again, to be even more focused on what we want to achieve. So bad environment, quite promising outlook, and I am really happy to see all the changes which are quite often triggered by AI, because this is the disruptive change in our business model and in tourism. Thank you. Maybe some rain would be also nice.
Operator, we are ready for Q&A.
Thank you. We will now move on to the Q&A session. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw, please press star two. Our first question comes from Jamie Rollo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Three questions, please, all on Markets + Airline, I am afraid. The last 4 weeks, obviously pretty encouraging, 7% growth in revenue, but you do describe a price war. Is it fair for us to assume all of that 7% is volume? What are prices down maybe in the last four weeks to stimulate that volume? Secondly, you have cut capacity another 1% or so. How much more could you take out for this season if pricing remains tough? How are you thinking about capacity for the winter season and next summer?
Then finally, I think you normally give some figures for the winter season this time of year, particularly for the U.K. But you also mentioned some structural reasons why it is going to be a tough season given the long-haul exposure is being curtailed. Is there any flavor you can give on winter bookings? Is it also fair for us to assume that actually winter could be very difficult indeed, given some of that long-haul program would have gone? Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe I said something wrong. For our products, we do not see the price war. We see that at the end of the season, margin is normally lower. But on top of that is nothing what we can see, because we are very much in line capacity with demand. If I said something wrong, please apologize that. We do not see the necessity to take out any capacity anymore for summer, unless there is some unhelpful event, which we actually, hopefully, will not see. So there is, from that side, no pressure. The pressure all comes from the three months after the war started. If we look into the winter, I also am a finance person, but as Mathias Kiep is in charge of the finance, he said we should be very cautious on that.
Although I am cautiously optimistic, not only because of the recent bookings, but I think that the ones which were not traveling in summer may go into the shoulder months. We have increased our footprint for November, February, March, and therefore, I am positive there. We have not increased the risk capacity. We have slightly less risk capacity, but we are flexible enough to react if there is bigger demand or less demand. You are right, and that is also quite interesting to see some of the customers who went to the U.S. go to Canada. Only a portion. Some of the customers who did not go to the Caribbean, Mexico has a weakness, go to Egypt. Others have not gone long haul, but have gone on a ship.
I assume that it will take a couple of months till long haul will recover, even if we assume that there hopefully will be some more peace in the Middle East. Therefore, it has been always good that the risk capacity is, except the flights to the Caribbean, which are also very strong for us, is more a non-risk play, where the impact on margin is less important. That's why slower start for the winter, but encouraging if I look at where margins should come from and when it comes to utilization of the aircraft. Of course, we have optimized a lot.
We closed long haul in Belgium. We put the planes into Amsterdam, a very slot restricted airport, and with good success. That's the reason why we have seen a small improvement in Western Europe. Hopefully more to come in the coming season. I look quite encouraged to the winter, and we will be very cautious capacity.
Thanks. Just maybe as a follow-up, given all the pressure in Markets + Airline, if we take the low end of your full year EBIT guidance of EUR 1.1 billion, that suggests Q4 Markets + Airline profit of under EUR 400 million, which would be a drop of around EUR 250 million year on year, and that would be about four times the profit drop you just reported. I'm just wondering, is that still a realistic scenario to be at the low end of the full year EBIT guidance? Thank you.
As I'm sitting next to Nicola and Mathias, I have to be very cautious to what I say. Of course, which is a little bit surprising when you are in August, some uncertainty from river cruise, which have to stop operations to fuel price, the last open position. Let's add that that way, and hopefully I'm not killed from right or left. I would be very disappointed with EUR 1.1 billion. Is that allowed to say? Maybe this answer helps a little bit.
I think that is clear enough. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is from Kate Xiao with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Thank you very much for taking my questions. Morning. Can I ask a quick follow-up on the guide? How about the high end of the range, then? Do you still have the ambition to potentially get back to last year's EBIT level? If you were able to get there eventually, what would need to happen at this point? A second question also on your capacity. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more in your risk capacity cuts, how much is dynamic through partners, compared to owned? With the recent, more positive momentum in booking trend, are these bookings going through your own capacity or dynamic? Thank you very much.
Will you do the first one before I say something wrong?
Yes, let me cover on the guidance. I think when we compare to our Q2 position, we set out a corridor of EUR 1.1 billion to EUR 1.4 billion in Q2, and there was incelerity about how would the market return link to how quickly would the situation in the Middle East be resolved. We have seen the very positive impact from the peace treaty at the time. We have seen the very positive impact whenever the situation calmed down. There is another element, which is fuel prices, where there was the question, would they come back quickly? Which they, in one window, did, but did not really stabilize on that level.
I think that if you take a step back, those impacts we not only see in Markets + Airline, as a lot of questions are, but that is something also on the related activities in the Hotels & Resorts, Turkey, on the footprint that we have there, Cyprus with the Cruises. There is a lot of ingredients that we had when we set out the guidance in Q2. Now we are advanced three months more, and I think what is a very good picture now we look at this, is that naturally we have narrowed the corridor.
I think as Sebastian said, given the volatility around us, you cannot exclude the lower end or the upper end, because otherwise we would have done that. At the same time, naturally, with the trajectory that we have, you come in a narrower corridor. At the same time, this is unfortunately not the time to specify this further.
Yes. Thank you, Mathias Kiep. On the risk capacity, as said, at least I and some other colleagues didn't expect that the business now would come back as it came back. Maybe we could have been less price-focused when we would have known that the business comes back as it is, because our own flying, our own risk hotel capacity is sold as it should be sold.
Whatever now comes, the huge majority is on dynamic capacity, and it's mainly to destinations like Turkey, some Greece, some Egypt. Therefore, the impact is on margin and fixed cost coverage, but it's not on getting a better load factor, because this opportunity is limited and therefore there is, if destinations keep stable, the risk is limited, but also the opportunity is limited. The opportunity comes from the dynamic part and from a few countries.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question is from Leo Carrington with Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my questions. I also have three, just one on trading and a couple of strategic. On trading, in terms of the Markets + Airline business, do you get a sense of why the bookings originating in the U.K. are lagging Germany still? Separately, on the TUIfly.com platform, is this an ambition, a platform mostly for the winter months, or do you expect some of your summer capacity will be on there in 2027? Lastly, I was interested to see you highlight the TUI Blue Bhutan. Not necessarily about that property, but in general, I would be interested to know how you perceive the future of, let's say, non-urban leisure destinations, given the trends for travelers to look for cooler locations and atypical summer destinations. Thank you.
Germany. Our German business had always had a significant higher share of dynamic packaged product. As the market has gone in two directions, one, the differentiated higher-end product on the one end, and the price sensitive dynamic package product. This has worked extremely well in Germany. In a very difficult market, has worked well with the TUI brand for the differentiated product, with our own hotel product, our own flying and ltur, for the dynamic packaged, very price sensitive product. When I say it worked well, if you take the long-haul out, the rest is extremely stable and doing well. Long-haul, I think, is very clear that there is no business to the Middle East. There is no business. The approach in the U.K. was different.
We brought everything into the TUI brand, and we had to learn from consumer intelligence that we, a little bit in some areas, we lost the trust of the consumer setting with TUI. I want to have a TUI flight. I want to have a TUI hotel. Maybe I want a less dynamic packages with other airline or with long-tail hotel. That was the reason why we introduced Sundeals to make very clear this is this part kind of product and this is the other kind of product. Therefore, whenever the dynamic is stronger than the differentiated products, we will benefit from both segments.
When you cut capacity, as we did in the U.K., but also in Germany, but mainly in the U.K., and the focus is on that, you are not getting the customers who then go to On the Beach or loveholidays or other great companies who offer a dynamic. We want to get our fair share from this as well, because one thing is clear, we want to grow. Bhutan. I did not know that we have a hotel in Bhutan, but apparently we have one. As we are growing in this area as well, we very much believe in the city leisure destinations. We are going to open the third hotel in New York. What is interesting, people always think a leisure hotel in a city is the same than a business hotel. It is not. It is a very different distribution. It is a very different product.
As much as business travel is at the moment, not an easy business, leisure is growing significantly because the second, third trip per year goes quite often into a city. There we will benefit from because we know how to distribute this product. Therefore, the RIU hotels in London are doing very well. Toronto is doing very well, and Dublin is doing well. That is why we also have the focus on that. One side effect, we are now opening the first hotel in Lisbon. Maybe there will be a second, hopefully soon. It helps build our brand in this destination where TUI is not known as we are in England or in Germany. With getting customers in the hotels, we will be also able to sell the connected trip product and so on.
It is part of the integrated model, and that is slightly different to a year ago. Today, we look even more how we can get the benefits from the vertical integration. So whenever we go to a destination with a TUI BLUE hotel or RIU hotel, it will be a leisure hotel where we have an own agency where flying could happen. So, a very strong focus on vertical integration. Changing customer preferences, not the consumer change. The climate change is quite interesting. I was in Turkey last week.
The weather was cooler than here in Hanover, which was almost the case the whole time. It was dry, and here it was humid, and it was windy, and here it was no wind. So I was quite surprised that the customer who were there said it is by far better than what I have seen in Germany. The feedback is very positive, and that is why we have not seen that this is a major does not impact our business at all. Although the wildfire did not do it because they were all in non-touristic areas. In the touristic areas we had up to now, hopefully they would stay less than the years before.
The change has been how the hotels have to be equipped. In the past, it was air conditioning in your room. Now it is about air conditioning also in the dining facilities, in the sport facilities. By the way, for the longer shoulder seasons, we need also heating. So this has been a change. So no real impact. If you talk about the boom to Nordics, yes, it is a 50% increase from 100,000 to 150,000. That is nice, but it is not game changing.
Thank you. That is interesting. On the TUIfly.com platform, just in terms of summer?
Yes. I think, and that is also what we learned from our dear competitors, sometimes to sell not the last five beds with a loss, but selling a seat only with a profit is the better part. You know that we only had, or you may know that we only had 5%, 4%, 3% seat only. It was more a tool to get for the lowest price to sell them and not like we do now. When I had to book for Lanzarote in the spring vacation, I had to pay EUR 1,000 for a seat only. This part of the business we missed. At the end, we do not want to change the benefits from synergies, from the vertical integration.
But to have, let us say, 10% less distressed sales and have less 10% higher value seat only products, that is the strategy. Some of our dear competitors have proven that this is a good way forward. We have not had the tools. We could not sell really single seats. We could not sell from the destination, and that is all now changing.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question comes from André Juillard from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Three, if I may. First one, about source market and destinations. Could you give us some more color about the recent trends you have been registering in your main source market in terms of volumes and pricing? In terms of destination, could you give us also some more color about where do you still have some capacity and which trend do you register at the moment?
Second question, also about pricing and volume. You were giving some more color about the fact that there was no pricing war. But could you also give us some more information about the trend you register in Markets + Airline and Hotels & Resorts, where you see some capacity available and where you feel pricing are sustainable?
Last one, about the fiscal year 2026 guidance. You were mentioning that you would be disappointed if you were ending the year in the low range of the EUR 1.1, EUR 1.4. What would allow you to be in the upper end of this guidance, in the actual environment and six weeks before the end of the fiscal year? Thank you.
I do not want to add something to the guidance unless Mathias Kiep wants to say something more to that. As I said, it was a personal comment from my side. What we do see is that the late markets very much go into Turkey. As I said, Spain is well-booked, quite often sold out. Volumes are, because they had a very slow start, which are available is Turkey and Egypt. When I talk about pricing, what hit us this year were the three months, March, April, May, and part of the June, where we had to stimulate the market. You could argue, did we do too much? But in hindsight, you are always more. Now the whole system has really stabilized despite the fact that the long haul is very small.
That was one of the reasons why a price number wouldn't help because it's very much influenced by the different mix. Long haul is normally 2 x more expensive, or at least 2 x more expensive than the trip to Mallorca. What we do see today, with the latest sales pricing is as it was one year ago. What we missed out was the three and a half months since the war started and the special effect which hit two ships. The disruption caused bringing customers home and having a special.
We had the market lead to Cyprus. Therefore, the hit of Cyprus, they're huge. There were weeks with 90% down in the first weeks. This was not possible to catch up again. If you look at source markets, the bigger markets have seen more impact, but that was more because we put the capacity out. The Eastern European markets have been doing better. We started Romania. We're quite surprised as a new entry about Romania. Spain, Latin America is still very small in volumes, but doing well. At the end, the volumes less were from U.K., Germany, and maybe a little bit Belgium. That was the main impact.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from Karan Puri from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. One question from my end on holiday experiences, please. Hotels & Resorts in particular. Given that customer trading did sort of improve, especially on the occupancy front, is it fair to assume that we see EBIT return to growth in Q4? Tracking some of the RevPAR data looks like Turkey and Egypt has more or less, more than recovered, actually. I guess Mexico and Jamaica should be less of an overhang. Any color on this would be really helpful. Thanks.
Maybe, Mathias, you want to say a few words. What I said was the impact of the three and a half very difficult months after the war started was, of course, more or will be more in July than in October. October is also a summer month. As the improvement steps in more in the latter months of the quarter or in October, we will see the occupancy moving into the right direction. How far, we will see.
Yes. I think that's fair comment. You saw in Q3, as Sebastian said, we were in hotel slightly below prior year. Now there's a bit of a catch-up that we should expect for Q4 that should support the development. At the same time, we don't expect a step change of the result development. I think that is, I would say, the broad corridor that we look at.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Ricardo Chinchilla with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thank you so much for taking my questions. My first question would be on the AI opportunity. You described the AI as potentially disruptive for tourism. What is the largest value pool today? Lower consumer acquisition costs, higher conversion, greater cross-selling or labor productivity? Going into the normalized power of the business, I was hoping if you could quantify the incremental savings identified since the second quarter update, and how much of these benefits should be visible in fiscal 2027? If geopolitical conditions normalize, how much of the 2027 profit growth would come from the recovery versus the health sales initiatives already going on the way?
Last question from me is that recent booking momentum appears to be disproportionately weighted towards dynamic inventory. Should we think about the current booking recovery as more supportive for revenue than for margin recovery? Thank you.
The first answer is very easy, all. We wouldn't have had the result we are showing in the third quarter if we wouldn't have had all the positive impacts of less cost, also very much triggered by AI. Of course, game change to customer service, game change in yielding, in how you do the production. Looking forward, for me, the biggest game change is in distribution. Because through the LMMs, you will search direct unless you go to the producer. The good thing is with TUI, we have very strong producer brands, the RIU, the Robinson, the TUI BLUE, the TUIfly.com, and so on. Two years ago, a year ago, we had 45% differentiated product, and we're on the way to 60%, 65% this year, and the target will be 80%.
I see black and white, the market, the consumer going to the ecosystem of a big, strong brand. Or they go to the LMMs to search for something and then will be redirected to it. That will reduce a customer or the acquisition cost for new customers. That's why we put so much effort to link to the LMMs. On the other hand, to have a product proposition, which is a TUI product proposition, which you as a customer would book direct because it will be less easy to sell undifferentiated product in the future because of LMMs. The later trading recovery, let's see.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Next question is from Cristian Nedelcu from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking my question. Two, if I may. The first one is a bit related with one of the previous questions. If we take a step back on the cost-cutting program, where are we right now? Could you tell us a bit in terms of are we 30% into getting those benefits or 50% into it? We are trying to visualize a little bit next year, what is the type of incremental year-over-year benefit from cost cutting that we could see?
Secondly, we discuss about the working capital. We are seeing some of your competitors being more aggressive by asking lower deposits. Could you talk a little bit there? Have you made any changes there in terms of the deposits on when the prepayments are made? To what extent that is one of the reasons the working capital has been a bit weaker? Thank you.
Yes. Good morning, Cristian. On the working capital side, I think we generally don't do working capital driven incentives. What we give to the teams is that they can support their market activities. If there's need for adjustments, then we can discuss this. But there's no general push to generate working capital or to use working capital as a key lever to generate bookings the other way. We also see from a consumer side that this is not ranked as a key priority. These are more other factors, otherwise we would also not see the bookings return, if that was the number one question.
We didn't do the promotion saying, "No prepayment." We are in the normal course of business.
Exactly. I think that is something that we can always discuss, so we would always be open, but we wouldn't like structural changes in the market for us and that we currently don't see. The working capital is more a result for us as a product booking rather than we want to take it as a big lever. On the cost cutting program, if we take a step back, our plans that we shared with you end of 2025, then we wanted to achieve around a third this year, another third next year, and then have that fully implemented during the course of 2028.
I think, Sebastian, it's fair that we currently see how can we further accelerate this. At the same time, I would say to bring another third next year is already a good result, and of course, you can always do more. But from a general direction, I think that corridor is currently prevailing. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Jürgen Kolb, from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much indeed. Two questions. One may be in terms of the average trip time. What have you seen from your guests? Are they maybe cutting-
I'm sorry. Just lost audio from Jürgen. Please stand by one second.
Okay.
Jürgen, if you could continue. Thank you.
Okay, try that again. A quick comment on maybe on the average trip time by customers. Have you seen any material changes recently which may speak for customers to go for another shorter trip, maybe sometime in October or so? Comments here, maybe. On the cost savings program that has just been asked, maybe from a wider perspective, the transformation process that is ongoing.
Have you learned anything new that where you would say we need to strengthen that particular transformation part of the whole equation stronger? Is AI, for example, becoming an even stronger element? Where do you think you have to do more in the years, even after 2027, 2028, from what you've learned and what you've seen currently? Thank you very much.
On the average trips, I remember, hopefully you're right, that after COVID it went from 10 to 11 days. Now we are back where we had been, maybe even slightly less. If we take out, it's very much influenced by less long haul, where people tend to stay longer than on medium short haul. If I take this effect out, it's now very stable, slightly below after COVID, but COVID was a one-day increase. May that suggest a second trip? I think the second trip is more depending on your personal possibilities. What we have seen is that, like families, they have less money. The elderly generation who had good jobs have the money, and they go for the second and third trip. Transformation process
The biggest change is AI, and the biggest change is in IT. You hardly need Java developers anymore. You need AI manager, and that is not only a significant source of efficiency gain, it is also a cost gain. It is also a big thing in efficiency gain that you can increase development speed by a high factor. This is, for a traditional company, quite tough work, but we have a great CIO, and that is why we are doing good progress. Global platforms. We are talking about that since three, four years, and now we are implementing to accelerate, to make sure that we have them also then finally in Spain and the small countries is important too. To speed up is very important. Distribution, that is what I said is the biggest change.
To accept that there are new sales channels which we had not seen two years ago, which are driving the business, and that the ecosystem, building the ecosystem also with partners in retail is absolutely key because that will be the most important sales channel in the future. Some of our competitors, the airline competitors, had a big advantage when you are a big seat only company, and then you offer the leisure. You do it to an existing customer base. That we did not do, and that is why the move into the seat only business, into the commercialization of the airline.
What have we learned? To be more radical, to be more drastic, to accept the change, and therefore, I said, I think in the press call before, the only good thing or the big good thing of having this crisis now was that we had to do, and we need to do things, and had to do and need to do things even quicker and to be more radical than before.
Got it. Super. Thanks very much, guys. Best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes the Q&A session, so I will hand back to Sebastian for any closing comments.
Thank you. I was just wondering what you could do to help us to get to the different range of our guidance. Please book and go on vacation. Every customer is welcome. No, I think we went through a challenging time, which was not easy to us. If you have 10,000 customers abroad and the only focus is to get them home, that has been a very tough experience to set the capacity right, to not panic, but to do good offers. That was a huge journey. As I said, maybe we could assume the strong comeback of the market earlier, but I think it was not really foreseeable. So we are happy that we managed this crisis.
I think we are all very happy, and I am very grateful to the team for putting more speed into the transformation to make sure when the market will come back, that we hopefully benefit maybe even more than others. It has been a tough learning. We do see that the business is normalizing despite all the uncertainty in the world. I do not know where we would stand if there wouldn't be the war from Russia against Ukraine, if there wouldn't have been the Iranian war, what would happen if the Hispanics would not be scared to go on vacation to Mexico because they do not know if they come back in the U.S.
We have to cope with it, and that's one of the tasks which we see that we can do our homework, we can get better in what we do, and that always helps us to be more resilient when it comes to these crisis. There is huge growth potential as the market is in generally a growth market. The work is tough, but with some optimism, we think we will get some benefits out of that. Thank you for being with us, and it's always interesting what you write and a lot of learnings. Mathias?
Thanks a lot. Thank you