TUI Case Study: Integrating a Sustainability Agenda for Growth

This case study examines TUI Group's efforts to incorporate a sustainability agenda into its operations. It begins with an overview of TUI, highlighting its vision, values, and past operations, including its transition from a traditional tour operator to an integrated supplier of world-class holiday experiences. The study identifies current operational issues, such as the environmental impact of its airlines, hotels, and travel agencies, including resource depletion, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. It also acknowledges organizational culture, inadequate systems, and technological gaps as hindrances to sustainable growth. TUI's past sustainability initiatives, such as the sustainable holiday plan launched in 2012, are discussed, along with its collaborations with environmental organizations. The case study concludes by briefly mentioning TUI's future plans for sustainability, emphasizing the company's commitment to environmental protection and sustainable practices. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar case studies and solved assignments.

Incorporating sustainability agenda for TUI
OVERVIEW OF THE CHOSEN ORGANIZATION
Thomson travel group plc was earlier being known as Hapag
Touristik Union of Preussag is one of the leading German
multinational travel and tourism organization. The company has
launched itself in the market of tourism in the year 1997 by
purchasing Hapag-Lloyd AG. The company achieved growth
through adopting different expansion strategy such as joint
ventures, acquisition and mergers all across the Europe. Presently,
TUI has its operations in more than 180 nations of the world and is
being spread into three sectors i.e. travel, hotel & resorts and cruise
ship (About TUI Group, 2021). Because of the altering
demographics of the travel and tourism industry and current
pandemic, the overall business of the company is being impacted
significantly in the last decade. Further, the firm is observing the
market and changing their policies and strategies according to the
trends and staying strong in the business. Presently, the group has
owned more than 3000 travel agencies and 280 hotels. They also
owns forty three percent stake in Hapag-Lloyd AG. The company
also possesses more than 100 aircrafts. The current revenue of the
group was decreased further in comparison to the previous year i.e.
4.7 billion Euros which was 9 billion Euros in 2019
GOALS
The short and the long term goals of the company represent
outcomes from the expected adopted strategies. The five goals of
TUI in order to become more sustainable are as follows:
 To operate fuel efficient airlines in Europe and save 20000
tons of carbon
 To engage more and more customers towards the company
 To acquire leading position as a sustainable tourism
operator across the world in the near future (Wahab and
Christopher, 2020)
 To implement sustainable practices within the operation of
the company
 To position as one of the largest travel agency of travel
experience concerning to social consciousness as well as
awareness of the environment
VISION
The main vision of Thomson travel group plc is to generate
remarkable instants for their valuable clients all throughout the
world and making their dreams come true. The key foundation of
the actions along with the attitude of the company is their vision,
values and intentions of the customers. For supporting the above
vision, TUI has some organizational values. The very first is trusted
wherein the company wants to engage its employees as well as
customers through developing reliable services and workplace and
providing consistent quality of services. The second organizational
value is unique by which the firm signifies that they will offer
services and products which are exclusively designed for the
customers and finally, the last one is inspiring (Vision & Values,
2021). This organizational value entails that efforts are being made
by the firm to motivate their employees so that better services are
offered to the clients and in regards with the customers, they
promise to offer fresh as well as effortless services to them. The
firm also want to engage their customers through desiring them to
explore the diversity of the world and novel horizons with having
knowledge of different foreign nations as well as their cultures as all
this will broaden the intellect of the people.
PAST OPERATIONS OF TUI

Talking in relation with the company, it has deliberately steppe out from the image of the traditional tour operator has adopted a
new model which helped the business to become an integrated supplier of world class holiday experiences. For attaining the main vision,
TUI has invested lot of energy in their products offerings and this has allowed them to develop a unique holidays for their valuable
customers. This is the major thing which differentiate themselves from their rivalries. Other than this, for holding a leadership position in
the market, Thomson travel group has continuously embraced the top niche in their delivery of services and has adopted the new trends
coming in the market (Holloway, 2019). Additionally, the company has also restructured and re-branded their firms for the same group to
attain higher growth. Even the business models were altered from time to time and incorporate internet technology for offering
information to tourists. Differentiation strategy was utilized by TUI for making sure that they offer unique along with high quality services
in comparison to their competitors.
Moving further, for the purpose of making travel and tourism sector more sustainable, TUI group has adopted different strategies
that helps them in decreasing the impact towards the environment and develop a positive alteration for both people as well as societies. In
the beginning of the year 2012, the company has propelled a sustainable holiday plan which was a key step towards their commitment to
feature more than 3000 hotels specialised as more sustainable accompanied with the reduction in the relative consumption by ten percent
and consumption of water cut by twenty percent. Moreover, company has also deceased carbon emission from their airlines by six percent
during the similar period of time (Sönmez and Tarlow, 2019). For attaining the sustainable goals, the company has also established a
devoted supportable development team.
CURRENT OPERATIONAL ISSUES
The current operations as well as activities of the Thomson
travel group have substantial influence on the environment. They
operate different types of business such as airlines, hotels and
travel agencies which results into depletion of local natural
resources, pollution and problems related to waste. The operations
of the firm always put some pressure on the natural resources
because of consuming them more than required and most of time
in that areas which does not have natural resources already. As
TUI is the leading travel group, the number of tourists are also
very high which results in over usage of water. Machineries,
equipments, generators and transportation leads in emission of
greenhouse gas. Other than this, one of the greatest threat to the
environment above all discussed above is air travel. The company
owns around 150 airlines which flies across the nations of the
world. Almost seventy five percent of the greenhouse gas is being
emitted due to this aviation industry. Additionally, there has been
an increment of thirteen percent in the CO2 emission since the year
2013 and this is all because of continued growth of popularity of
air travel among the consumers (Impact of air travel, 2021).
Considering this impact, several different steps are being
undertaken by TUI to become more sustainable and protect the
environment such as flying more fuel efficient aircrafts, cooperating
with different environmental protection organizations and NGO like
MEER, Marine Education Program and Pottwale e.V for expressing
their concerns towards people, planet and ecosystem. Nevertheless,
there are some operational issues that hinders the sustainable growth
of the organization and these are particularly, organizational culture,
inadequate systems to manage, failure in keeping up with the
innovative technologies, knowledge gap, motivation, fear related to
high cost of investment and last but not the least, non-existence of
internal mechanism for effectively value the advantages of
organizing sustainability.

FUTURE PLANS OF THE COMPANY