European travel giant TUI Group continues to increase the proportion of holiday bookings made online in all its major markets other than Germany.

In the year to end-Sept16, 43% of bookings across the group were made online, a 2% increase on the previous year.

Specifically, online accounted for 58% of the UK business, up 4% from last year. TUI continues to grow in the digitally mature Nordic markets where 75% of bookings came online, 3% ahead of last year.

The only blip is in Germany – where online bookings continue to lag other markets at 14% of the total, an improvement of a single percentage point.

In volume terms, Germany is TUI’s biggest market – 6.3 million customers compared with the UK’s 6 million although the gap is closing – which means that the revenue benefits from the offline-to-online shift are still to come.

The German business’ low direct distribution percentage reflects that TUI relies on third parties and franchisees to sell its holidays, and that it still has a seat-only air business TUIfly (which is merging with Etihad).

In the UK and Nordics, the amount of business done via TUI’s own channels has remained flat year-on-year – the lift in online means that less business as a percentage is coming via shops and call-centres.

Elsewhere in the analysts presentation, TUI outlined its IT and digital transformation approach in the slide below. German customers will be the last major source market to have access to the TUI app, while the business was the first to get access to TUI single customer view platform.

And the capex pie-chart shows how important IT investment is to the group, accounting for a considerably higher spend out of the €605 million than its much-vaunted cruise product overhaul.

The financials show that underlying EBITDA for the group was up 12.5% at just over €1 billion on turnover of just over €17 billion. It expects this metric to grow by at least 10% every year until its FY18/19.

At the time of writing, shares on the London Stock Exchange had climbed 2%, giving the business a market cap of £6.4 billion.

Related reading from Tnooz:
On The Beach on the up (Dec16)
Thomas Cook – more IT, fewer carpets (Nov16)