Leisure First? – The Growing Importance of Leisure Travel for Airline Strategies
Summary
This panel discussion at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by Dr. Markus Heller, brings together three senior airline executives to examine how leisure travel is overtaking business travel as the primary growth engine for airlines. The panelists are Peter Glade (Chief Commercial Officer, TUI Fly), Paul Bixby (Chief Commercial Officer, EasyJet Holidays), and Christian Lesjak (Commercial Director Sales, Condor). The session opened with an unscripted discussion about an active crisis in the Middle East (likely a geopolitical conflict), with airlines scrambling to repatriate passengers — including 5,000 TUI passengers aboard cruise ships — demonstrating the operational complexity and low profitability of aviation. Peter Glade noted bluntly that aviation will 'never be the most profitable industry in the world.'
The core thesis of the panel is that the traditional tour-operator-led capacity model is obsolete. Paul Bixby argued that hotels no longer depend on back-to-back occupancy agreements with tour operators and now distribute across multiple channels: 50% with tour operators, 20% via channel managers, 10% via bed banks, and 20% direct. He stated that capacity planning 'should never be tour-operator-led anymore, even if it's TUI,' because the hotel distribution model has fundamentally changed in the last 10–15 years.
EasyJet Holidays was founded in 2019 as a vertical integration play on top of EasyJet's existing fleet of over 360 aircraft. Bixby explained the rationale as eliminating 'double marginalization' — capturing margin on both the flight and the hotel rather than ceding one to third parties. Despite its success, EasyJet Holidays currently fills only 7% of the airline's roughly 104 million seats per year, leaving significant growth runway. EasyJet is also opening its first non-European base in Marrakesh in summer 2026, primarily to generate reverse flows into France and Switzerland.
TUI Fly, operating 130 aircraft across five AOCs spanning five European countries, is undergoing a major commercial transformation. Historically, the five TUI airlines operated purely as internal transport suppliers for the TUI tour operator rather than as commercially managed airlines. Peter Glade described building a new centralized commercial team to run TUI Fly more like an independent commercial airline — 'sweating the asset' — while still prioritizing the in-house tour operator with the best prices. TUI previously operated an aircraft exchange program with an unnamed partner (with inverse seasonality) of up to 14 aircraft, which was ended when trade unions intervened.
Condor has executed a rapid full-fleet renewal: 18 brand-new Airbus A330-900 Neo widebody aircraft are already in service, and the narrowbody transition is underway, expected to complete in 2027–2028. Christian Lesjak said Condor no longer sells fixed allotments to tour operators — all capacity is now dynamically priced and managed across multiple sales channels including OTAs, with tour operators competing for availability alongside other channels. Condor is also expanding into domestic and European city routes, driven partly by the need for product consistency and to reduce dependency on feeder network previously supplied by Lufthansa. Lesjak noted that Condor is generating significant US-to-Europe inbound demand and that premium class cabin (94 business/premium economy seats per widebody) is selling without difficulty on intercontinental routes, suggesting leisure premium demand has strengthened.
A recurring theme was the tension airlines face between serving third-party tour operator partners and competing with them via their own holiday brands. Bixby claimed EasyJet Holidays can 'pretty much guarantee' it will be cheaper than any third party packaging an EasyJet flight 80% of the time, yet EasyJet as an airline still distributes freely to all tour operators including TUI. Glade illustrated the strategic value of an owned airline to a tour operator: controlling access to capacity in peak school-holiday periods, filling marginal seats when package margins decline, and deploying capacity to exclusive destinations (e.g., Cape Verde routes started with EasyJet Holidays from Lisbon, Porto, and the UK in 2026).
Key Takeaways
- •Paul Bixby stated that EasyJet Holidays fills only 7% of EasyJet's approximately 104 million annual seats, highlighting that even a well-established airline holiday brand remains a small fraction of total capacity and that the growth opportunity is still enormous.
- •Peter Glade declared that aviation 'will never be the most profitable industry in the world' — but defended the industry's culture of solidarity in crises, noting that during the Middle East disruption TUI Fly was prepared to operate rescue flights regardless of whether stranded passengers were TUI or EasyJet customers.
- •The traditional tour-operator-led capacity model is effectively over, according to Paul Bixby: hotels now split distribution across tour operators (~50%), channel managers (~20%), bed banks (~10%), and direct (~20%), meaning airlines should size capacity to actual customer demand rather than bed-to-seat commitments from a single tour operator.
- •Christian Lesjak confirmed Condor has completely eliminated fixed allotments — all capacity is now dynamically priced and sold across tour operators, OTAs (including Booking.com), and direct channels simultaneously, with big partners receiving preferential terms but no volume guarantees. He described this as 'the only chance for us to get hold of some margin.'
- •Condor has renewed its entire widebody fleet within 18 months, deploying 18 brand-new Airbus A330-900 Neo aircraft, and expects to complete the narrowbody transition by 2027–2028, making it one of the most fuel-efficient and sustainably positioned European leisure carriers. Lesjak said Condor's 94-seat premium cabin on intercontinental routes is selling without difficulty, citing stronger-than-expected price-insensitive leisure demand.
- •TUI Fly is undergoing a structural commercial transformation: the group's five airlines across five European countries (130 aircraft total, top-10 European carrier by fleet) have historically been run as internal transport suppliers rather than commercial airlines. Peter Glade is building a centralized commercial team to manage all five AOCs together and 'sweat the asset' far more aggressively going forward.
- EasyJet is opening its first base outside Europe in Marrakesh in summer 2026. The primary strategic rationale is not growth in Morocco per se but to generate cost-effective reverse flows into France, Switzerland, and other European markets, operating under a European AOC.
Transcript
Thank you very much for still attending and the room is still quite full. We are very happy to have you with us today. Now in the next session to discuss leisure first question mark the growing importance of leisure travel for airline strategies. So we are still in the airline business but focusing a bit more on the tourism part of uh the airline business. So let me have uh first of all I have to um to announce that uh Mr. Nabil Zultan from Emirates cannot be on the stage as he didn't make it ou...
