The Thomson and First Choice package holiday brands, tour operator group Tui Travel, has plans to cut the number of British travellers’ summer holidays offered by 27% in 2009. It cited a decline in consumer confidence, rise in unemployment and weakness of the pound against the euro as reasons for the cut-down.

The UK market leader Thomas Cook, had revealed in September its plan of 15% fewer summer holidays for next year, while emphasising possibility of further big cuts if necessary. It claimed flexibility in managing and improving balance between demand and supply and reported that it had committed less than 10% hotel capacity for next summer.

Analysts argue that cuts planned by the two industry giants would have been much more severe but for the collapse of XL Leisure, the third largest UK operator, in September.

The German-controlled Tui stated that it was focussing on managing capacity in the UK in the backdrop of weaker advance bookings. An initially planned reduction of 15% has been raised to 16% after noting that bookings were 17% less than last year. The cuts are in addition to a 13% fall in offers to UK travellers by Tui this year.

Tui Travel and Thomas Cook were formed as a result of Tui AG’s purchase of British tour operator First Choice Holidays and German group Thomas Cook’s acquisition of UK’s My Travel, last year.

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