Holiday firm Tui to shut 48 more High Street shops

Travel firm Tui is set to shut 48 more High Street shops in the UK, affecting 273 jobs.

The UK's largest tour operator said it would offer to redeploy employees at risk of redundancy to other stores or to work from home.

The move follows the closure of 166 Tui shops announced in July 2020 which affected up to 900 jobs.

Both decisions were made after the pandemic sped up a shift to people making online holiday bookings.

Tui will have 314 High Street retail stores remaining following the closures.

The firm said in a statement: "The travel industry and the British High Street are both facing unprecedented pressure.

"We can therefore confirm that we are proposing to close 48 retail stores. All colleagues at risk of redundancy will be offered roles in other stores where there are vacancies, or in the new homeworking retail and contact centre team."

Tui said it was "imperative that we make these difficult cost decisions and do our best to look after our colleagues during such unprecedented uncertainty."

It added that the Covid-19 pandemic has strengthened a change in shopping habits, "with people looking to buy online or wishing to speak with travel experts from the comfort of their own home."

"We have world class travel advisors at Tui, so we hope many of them will become homeworkers and continue to offer the personalised service we know our customers value," the firm added.

Tui declined to say which outlets were set to close, but said that it would be creating 290 roles.

The holiday firm said in February that it expects to run 80% of its normal capacity for this summer, with 2.8 million customers already booked for its holidays.

Income in the three months to the end of 2020 fell 87.8% year-on-year, from €3.86bn (£3.4bn) to €468.1m.