Tui Travel hit by one-off costs and weak French sales

Travel company Tui, which owns Thomson and First Choice, has seen profit slip due to weak French sales and a restructuring in its specialist and activity division. Pre-tax profit for the year was £181m, down 10% on a year earlier, while revenue rose 4% to £15.1bn. However, excluding one-off costs, pre-tax profit rose 21%. Chief executive Peter Long said it had been an "outstanding" year. Tui said long term growth was on track. Tui wrote off £188m in its specialist and activity division, which offers themed holidays, after a restructuring that resulted in it shutting down unprofitable lines of business as well as a management change. "Now that this review is complete we are confident of delivering underlying annualised profit growth of 8-10%," it said. Meanwhile, it said its French division was hit by the weak economy there and low demand for North African holidays. Tui said it had now removed unprofitable routes and reduced its long-haul programme. Overall, however Tui said it was confident it would meet its five year target of annual growth of between 7-10%. It said trading for winter was "in line" with its expectations, with 60% of its programme already sold. It also said it was "pleased" with summer 2014 trading, despite 2013 being a strong performance to follow.