TUI's origins trace to 1968, when Touristik Union International (TUI) was established as a joint venture of several German travel companies. The organization was created to coordinate package holiday offerings for German consumers.
The modern TUI AG emerged from Preussag AG, a German industrial conglomerate that had been founded in 1923 as a Prussian mining and metallurgy company. In the late 1990s, Preussag's CEO Michael Frenzel led a dramatic strategic transformation, divesting the company's industrial assets and pivoting entirely to tourism.
Preussag acquired Hapag-Lloyd's tourism division in 1997, gaining control of TUI (the travel brand), Hapag-Lloyd Airlines, and other tourism assets. Preussag renamed itself TUI AG in 2002, completing its transformation from an industrial company to a tourism group.
TUI expanded aggressively through acquisitions in the early 2000s, acquiring Thomson Travel Group (UK) in 2000 and other European travel companies. The company built an integrated tourism model combining travel agencies, airlines, hotels, and cruise ships.
In 2007, TUI AG merged its tourism operations with First Choice Holidays (UK) to create TUI Travel PLC, a separately listed company. TUI AG retained a majority stake in TUI Travel PLC.
In 2014, TUI AG and TUI Travel PLC merged to create a single unified TUI AG, simplifying the corporate structure and creating one of the world's largest integrated tourism companies.
TUI was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which effectively shut down international travel in 2020 and 2021. The German government provided TUI with approximately 4.3 billion euros in state aid to help the company survive the pandemic. TUI subsequently repaid the state aid through capital increases and asset sales.
For fiscal year 2024 (ending September 2024), TUI reported revenue of approximately 21.5 billion euros and returned to profitability following the pandemic recovery.