How to Apply to TUI Group

19 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 431 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • The canonical careers portal is careers.tuigroup.com, built on Radancy TalentBrew. Despite some external registry references to SmartRecruiters, the live consumer apply experience for the overwhelming majority of TUI Group postings runs through this Radancy/TalentBrew portal. Aggregator listings (LinkedIn, Indeed, Stepstone, Xing) link back to the same apply form; submit there, not on the aggregator.
  • TUI is a genuinely integrated leisure tourism business with around 70,000 employees, headquartered split between Hannover and Berlin, operating roughly 150 aircraft under TUI fly liveries, more than 400 hotels and resorts (RIU, Robinson, TUI Blue, TUI Magic Life, TUI Suneo, Atlantica), Marella Cruises, and the 50/50 TUI Cruises JV with Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd that operates Mein Schiff and the Hapag-Lloyd Cruises subsidiary.
  • Sebastian Ebel has been CEO since September 2022. The Group reported a record summer 2024 and has materially improved its balance sheet and credit ratings since the COVID period, having repaid the German government's roughly 4 billion euro WSF stabilisation package through capital increases including a heavily discounted 2023 rights issue.
  • The Russian shareholder Alexei Mordashov was placed under EU sanctions in March 2022. His holding (formerly around 32%) was restructured and progressively diluted, and the practical influence of the Mordashov family on TUI decisions today is effectively zero. The legal and compliance bar around sanctions and Russia-adjacent topics remains high; treat it carefully in any interview.
  • Apply at careers.tuigroup.com, filter by location and function, pick the right brand and source market, create a candidate profile, upload a parser-friendly PDF CV, complete the structured form fields including salary expectation and work-authorisation status, and submit. Watch for assessment-vendor invitations for cockpit, cabin, and shipboard roles in your spam folder.
  • Interviews are deliberate and structured: People & Culture screen, hiring manager deep dive, peer and skip-level panel, technical exercise for product and engineering, simulator and assessment day for aviation, language and STCW verification for shipboard. End-to-end timelines run four to ten weeks for HQ professional roles; aviation and senior leadership are longer. Probationary period is six months in Germany.
  • Pilot, cabin, ground, and HQ tracks are managed separately. ver.di and UFO are strong at TUI fly Germany; Vereinigung Cockpit represents cockpit. Strikes and collective bargaining can affect hiring pipelines temporarily. Constructive engagement with co-determination and the Tarifvertrag framework is a competence the company hires for explicitly at the management level.
  • English plus German bilingual fluency is the practical floor for Hannover and Berlin HQ professional roles; Dutch, Spanish, Nordic languages, French, Italian, and Greek are valued in the relevant source-market and destination teams. State language levels honestly with CEFR ratings; inflated claims are caught in the first interview.
  • Sustainability is real strategy not garnish: SBTi-validated 1.5C-aligned targets, SAF roadmap, hotel emissions reduction, supply-chain due diligence under LkSG and EU CSRD, the TUI Care Foundation programme. Candidates who can speak to sustainability in the context of their own function stand out across panels.
  • Apprenticeships (Ausbildung) and the Group Graduate Trainee Programme follow annual cycles; apply in autumn for an August or September start the following year. Werkstudent and Praktikum postings appear year-round on the same careers portal.

About TUI Group

TUI Group AG (XETRA: TUI1, LSE: TUI) is the largest integrated leisure tourism business in the world, with roughly 70,000 employees, headquarters split between Hannover and Berlin in Germany, a fleet of around 150 aircraft flying under TUI fly liveries across multiple European country brands, more than 400 owned and managed hotels and resorts including the RIU, Robinson, TUI Blue, TUI Magic Life, and TUI Suneo concepts, the Marella Cruises ocean fleet (UK), and a 50/50 joint venture with Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. that operates TUI Cruises (the German-language Mein Schiff fleet) and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises (the luxury Europa and Hanseatic expedition vessels). The Group sells holidays through tour operators in source markets across Northern, Central, and Western Europe — the United Kingdom and Ireland, Germany, the Nordics, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and beyond — and books roughly 20+ million customers a year in normal trading conditions. The modern TUI was created by the 2007 merger of Hannover-based Preussag's tourism business with First Choice Holidays of the UK, forming TUI Travel PLC, which then re-merged in 2014 with the parent TUI AG to create the present integrated group. The company is dual-listed in Frankfurt and London (it left the FTSE 100 and re-domiciled its primary listing to Frankfurt in 2023, becoming a XETRA-only line; the LSE listing was retained as a secondary). Sebastian Ebel has been CEO since September 2022, replacing Friedrich Joussen who led the company through the COVID crisis. The Chair of the Supervisory Board is Dieter Zetsche, the former Daimler chief. The candid history matters for any candidate. TUI was hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic than almost any other major European employer, with travel restrictions across 2020-2022 reducing revenue to a fraction of normal. The German federal government, through KfW and the Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds (WSF), extended a stabilisation package across three rounds totalling roughly 4 billion euros in loans, guarantees, and a silent participation stake. TUI repaid the WSF silent participations and the bulk of state-backed credit lines through a series of capital increases between 2021 and 2023, including a heavily discounted rights issue in spring 2023 that diluted existing shareholders significantly. The company exited state aid, restored its balance sheet, and reported a record summer 2024 with strong bookings and meaningful underlying EBIT growth, followed by a positive trading update for fiscal year 2024-2025. Net debt has come down materially, the Standard & Poor's and Moody's credit ratings have improved off the COVID floor, and the leverage ratio is the cleanest it has been in years. The ownership story is just as important. From the late 2000s through 2022, the largest single shareholder was the Russian businessman Alexei Mordashov, holding roughly 32% through Unifirm Limited and related vehicles. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mordashov was placed under EU sanctions in March 2022. To preserve TUI's ability to operate normally, his shareholding was restructured: a portion was transferred to his then-wife Marina Mordashova (who was not initially sanctioned), the voting rights of the sanctioned holding were frozen by Bafin, and the family interest was progressively diluted through capital increases the family did not subscribe to. By the end of 2023 the Unifirm holding had been substantially reduced and the practical influence of the Mordashov family on TUI decisions was effectively zero. The other named major shareholders today include the Spanish Riu family (through their long-standing partnership in the RIU Hotels & Resorts joint venture), Spain's Grupo Globalia and the Klaus-Michael Kühne family, with the remainder in free float. For a job candidate this matters because it explains why TUI is so cautious about communications policy, sanctions compliance, and the optics of any travel-adjacent decision involving Russia or sanctioned individuals. The legal and compliance bar is high. Operationally the Group is organised into three segments. Markets & Airlines bundles the source-market tour operators (TUI Deutschland, TUI UK & Ireland, TUI Northern Region, TUI Western Region) with the TUI fly airline operations (TUI fly Germany, TUI fly Belgium, TUI Airways UK, TUIfly Nordic, Corendon Dutch Airlines through the Corendon stake), running roughly 150 aircraft including a substantial Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 737-800 fleet plus 787 long-haul. Holiday Experiences combines the Hotels & Resorts business (RIU, Robinson, TUI Blue, TUI Magic Life, TUI Suneo, Atlantica), the Cruises business (Marella Cruises wholly owned, plus the 50/50 TUI Cruises JV with RCL and the Hapag-Lloyd Cruises subsidiary of TUI Cruises), and TUI Musement, the destination-experiences and excursions business that grew out of the Musement acquisition. All Other Segments collects corporate functions, the new growth platforms (TUI App, dynamic packaging marketplace, TUI Care Foundation, the OTA business), and the central group functions in Hannover and Berlin. The recent strategic emphasis under Sebastian Ebel has been platform thinking — turning TUI into a more digital, more dynamic-packaging, more app-led business while keeping the differentiated assets (hotels, planes, ships) that source-market OTAs cannot match. Hiring in 2024-2025 has reflected that pivot, with a notable lift in product, engineering, data, and revenue management roles in Hannover, Berlin, and the European hubs alongside the steady operational hiring at the airlines, hotels, and ships.

ATS System: Radancy TalentBrew (careers.tuigroup.com), with sub-flows for aviation assessment, cruise hiring, and individual hotel brands

TUI Group's primary candidate-facing careers portal at careers.tuigroup.com is built on the Radancy TalentBrew platform (formerly TMP Worldwide), a recruitment marketing and applicant tracking system widely used across European travel, hospitality, and aviation employers. The portal serves the application form, the candidate profile, the document parser, and the requisition routing for the bulk of TUI Group postings across Hannover and Berlin headquarters, the Markets & Airlines source-market tour operators, the TUI fly airlines, TUI Hotels & Resorts central functions, TUI Musement, and the corporate technology and commercial teams. You will see tbcdn.talentbrew.com and apply.talentbrew.io assets in the network requests on the apply page; the back-end requisition workflow is integrated with the People & Culture team's internal HR systems, which include SAP SuccessFactors for core HR records and onboarding for many entities, plus brand-specific maritime and aviation hiring partners for the regulated workforces. Some external coverage and registry data has historically referenced SmartRecruiters in connection with TUI; if any subsidiary or country org runs a SmartRecruiters instance for niche roles it does not surface as the canonical Group apply path. For practical purposes, candidates should treat careers.tuigroup.com (Radancy TalentBrew) as the canonical entry point, and follow any branded sub-flow exactly as instructed when the portal redirects (TUI Cruises shipboard, RIU Hotels Spain, Robinson Club, individual TUI fly type ratings) for those specialised workforces.

  • Bookmark careers.tuigroup.com and use it as the canonical entry point. Aggregator sites (LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, Stepstone, Xing) are real but always link back to the TalentBrew apply form; submit there, not on the aggregator.
  • Create one candidate profile and reuse it across applications within the same brand stream. The profile persists upload history and structured fields, which materially speeds up subsequent applications.
  • Upload a parser-friendly PDF CV (single column, standard fonts, no images of text, no decorative skill bars) and review the auto-populated form fields after upload. The TalentBrew parser is decent but not perfect on dates and employer formatting.
  • Tailor the cover letter to the named brand and segment. A Marella Cruises cover letter that talks about Mein Schiff or vice versa tags you immediately as a low-effort applicant.
  • Name a salary expectation (Gehaltsvorstellung in EUR for German roles, GBP range for UK roles). Leaving it blank is a small negative in German hiring etiquette and a missed signal everywhere else.
  • Use the location and function filters before you search. The portal indexes thousands of roles in normal trading conditions and unfiltered browsing wastes time.
  • Watch for assessment-vendor invitations in your spam folder, especially for cockpit, cabin, and shipboard roles. Third-party domains for assessment platforms can be misclassified; whitelist your TUI candidate-portal email.
  • Use the My Applications dashboard to track status. Status updates are slower than candidates expect; three to four weeks for HQ professional roles is normal, longer for senior leadership.
  • Apprenticeships, Group Graduate Trainee Programme, and Werkstudent postings have separate sub-pages and annual cycles; apply early in the autumn for the following year start.
  • If you applied via a brand-specific sub-flow (RIU Spain, Robinson Club, TUI Cruises shipboard) and want to also apply for a Group HQ role, you may need a separate profile in the central TalentBrew portal.

Interview Culture

TUI Group interviews are calm, structured, and meaningfully different across the segments and brands.

For Hannover and Berlin headquarters professional roles in product, technology, data, finance, sustainability, marketing, and corporate functions the typical pattern is a People & Culture screen by phone or video (30 to 45 minutes), a hiring-manager interview running 60 to 90 minutes (often hybrid: video first round, on-site second), a panel round including a peer from an adjacent function and a skip-level leader, and for senior roles a final conversation with a member of the Group Executive Committee or the relevant segment leader. Competency-based questions are the norm, with strong emphasis on situation-action-result examples drawn from your most recent role. For technology and product roles expect a take-home or on-site technical exercise (system design for engineering leadership, product case for product management, SQL and analytical case for data) plus a values-and-collaboration interview that explicitly probes how you work inside a multi-brand, multi-country, co-determined organisation. Hiring panels are deliberately diverse by function, gender, and nationality, and the Group has been investing in interviewer training to reduce variance across panels. For TUI fly cockpit and cabin roles the pattern is structurally different: the People & Culture or aviation recruitment team handles initial CV screening, eligibility (licence, medical, language, type-rating where required, EU/UK right-to-work), and an assessment day combining HR interviews, group exercises, simulator checks for cockpit, and customer-service role plays for cabin. The cockpit assessment day commonly includes an in-person base evaluation for first officer roles and a more demanding command assessment for captain upgrades. Cabin assessment days run as half-day group events with multiple stages. Strikes and collective bargaining periodically affect the recruitment pipeline at TUI fly Germany; UFO (Unabhängige Flugbegleiter Organisation) represents cabin crew and Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) represents cockpit, with periodic rounds of pay-and-conditions negotiations that can pause hiring temporarily. For TUI fly Belgium the social dialogue runs through Belgian works-council and union frameworks. Calibrate expectations accordingly. For TUI Cruises and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises shipboard roles the process is again distinct: the TUI Cruises Hamburg-based hiring team handles applications, runs interviews via video and on-site at the Hamburg HQ, and partners with maritime medical and STCW certification verification providers. Contract terms are voyage-based (typically four to six months on, two months off), salaries follow industry-standard maritime grades plus tips for guest-facing roles, and language profile is critical (German plus English for the Mein Schiff fleet, German plus English plus often a third European language for the Hapag-Lloyd Europa fleet given the international guest mix on expedition voyages). For shoreside cruise roles in Hamburg and Berlin the process resembles the Group HQ pattern. For TUI Hotels & Resorts the picture varies by brand. RIU Hotels & Resorts (50/50 JV with the Spanish Riu family) runs its own Mallorca-headquartered hiring funnel for shoreside management and central roles. Robinson Club hires through its own Hannover-Berlin connected funnel for club leadership and seasonal animation/sports staff. TUI Blue and TUI Magic Life central functions run through the Group portal with on-site interviews at the relevant resort destinations for resort-based roles. Atlantica Hotels in Cyprus and Greece runs its own local hiring with Group oversight. Compensation conversations are handled by People & Culture late in the process. For Hannover, Berlin, and other German salaried roles a base salary plus a variable component (often Group Annual Bonus tied to Group EBIT and individual objectives) is the norm; senior roles include long-term incentive (LTI) components in TUI shares. Production, ground operations, and TUI fly cabin and cockpit roles in Germany are governed by Tarifverträge (collective bargaining agreements) with ver.di, UFO, and Vereinigung Cockpit, with transparent published pay scales. Probationary period (Probezeit) is six months for most German permanent contracts; UK probationary periods are typically three to six months. Background checks are proportionate by role: light for typical professional roles, more thorough for finance, audit, sanctions-sensitive, aviation, and shipboard positions. A Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis (police certificate of good conduct) is requested for many German shipboard and aviation roles; a DBS check is requested for UK customer-facing roles. Verbal offers are followed by a written contract within one to two weeks; counter-signed contract typically lands within four weeks of verbal offer for HQ roles.

What TUI Group Looks For

  • Genuine interest in TUI specifically and in the integrated tourism model. Candidates who can speak to why TUI versus a pure-play OTA (Booking, Expedia), versus a competitor European tour operator (DER Touristik, FTI before its 2024 insolvency, Jet2holidays), or versus the airlines and hotel groups that supply the model, beat candidates with stronger paper credentials but a generic 'I want to work in travel' framing. Read the most recent annual report from the corporate site, know two or three brands across two or three segments, and have a point of view on the Sebastian Ebel platform strategy.
  • Operational rigour with the right numbers. Tourism is a low-margin, capital-intensive, weather-and-event-exposed business. Candidates who think in terms of volumes (passengers carried, room nights sold, sector count, ASK), unit economics (load factor, occupancy, RevPAR, RASK/CASK, average selling price, conversion), and cash flow rather than just revenue, are read as ready to contribute. Adjective-heavy storytelling without numbers is read as a warning sign across functions.
  • Comfort with multi-brand, multi-country, multi-language complexity. TUI is genuinely complex: dozens of legal entities, multiple unions and works councils, source-market and destination-market tensions, regulatory regimes spanning EASA, IATA, IMO, IFRS, German HGB, UK FRS, and a sanctions environment shaped by the Mordashov history. Candidates who have worked in similarly complex multi-jurisdiction businesses (Lufthansa Group, IAG, Carnival Corporation, Marriott International, Booking Holdings) integrate fastest.
  • Sustainability fluency in your own function. The Group climate roadmap is real strategy with SBTi-validated targets, SAF commitments, hotel emissions reduction, supply-chain due diligence under LkSG and CSRD, and the TUI Care Foundation programme. Candidates who can talk about decarbonisation, water and waste, biodiversity, destination stewardship, and EU Taxonomy reporting in the context of their own function stand out across hiring panels.
  • Crisis muscle and a calm head. The COVID-19 pandemic, the WSF state-aid package, the Russian shareholder situation, periodic ATC strikes and airport disruptions, hurricane and earthquake destination crises, and the 2024 FTI competitor insolvency that shifted booking volumes mid-cycle are all part of the recent operating history. Candidates who can describe how they led teams through shocks without dramatising and without minimising are valued highly. Volunteering crisis war stories without prompting reads as overconfidence; answering competency questions with calm specifics reads as readiness.
  • Digital and platform mindset. Under Sebastian Ebel the strategic emphasis has shifted to platform thinking: a single TUI app, dynamic packaging at scale, customer lifetime value modelling, modern data infrastructure, and product-led growth. Candidates who have worked in marketplace, OTA, fintech, or modern subscription business models often bring concepts the existing organisation needs. The legacy estate is real and integration debt is real; pragmatism is valued over greenfield idealism.
  • Bilingual and intercultural fluency. English is the working language for many Group teams, but German fluency materially accelerates integration in Hannover and Berlin and is essential for stakeholder management with the Betriebsrat, the Tarifvertrag negotiations, the Supervisory Board, and the German operating brands. UK roles run in English. Source-market roles run in the local language (Dutch, French, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Spanish). Honest CEFR self-assessment is critical.
  • Constructive engagement with co-determination. The Mitbestimmung structure, the Group Works Council, the brand-level Betriebsrat, the union landscape (ver.di, UFO, VC), and the Supervisory Board's employee representation are real institutional facts. For management, HR, legal, finance, and operations candidates the ability to work constructively inside this structure (not against it, not around it) is a competence the company hires for explicitly.
  • Long-tenure and stability signals for senior roles. TUI is a 100-plus-year-old institution (the Preussag heritage goes back to 1923 and the integrated TUI structure was created in 2007 from the merger with First Choice Holidays). For senior roles the People & Culture team and the segment leadership consistently surface candidates who have led teams through full cycles — multi-year transformations, brand re-launches, fleet renewals, hotel openings, IT replatforms — rather than candidates whose tenure ended before the consequences of their decisions landed.
  • Cultural alignment with the brand promise. TUI's public-facing brand promise is built around delivering meaningful holiday memories at scale, with a strong emphasis on safety, customer service, and inclusive holiday experiences. Candidates whose CVs show personal commitment to customer-facing roles or to direct guest impact (hospitality, airline, retail, healthcare) and whose interview answers consistently centre customer outcomes (not just internal KPIs) stand out across functional hiring panels.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ATS does TUI Group actually use and where do I apply?
TUI Group's canonical careers portal is careers.tuigroup.com, built on the Radancy TalentBrew platform (you will see tbcdn.talentbrew.com and apply.talentbrew.io assets in the network requests). This portal handles the application form, candidate profile, document parser, and requisition routing for the bulk of TUI Group postings across Hannover and Berlin headquarters, the Markets & Airlines source-market tour operators, TUI fly airlines, TUI Hotels & Resorts central functions, TUI Musement, and the corporate technology and commercial teams. Some external registry data references SmartRecruiters in connection with TUI; if any subsidiary or country org runs a SmartRecruiters instance for niche roles it does not surface as the canonical Group apply path. The internal HR system of record for many TUI entities is SAP SuccessFactors, but the candidate-facing apply experience is Radancy TalentBrew. TUI Cruises shipboard, RIU Hotels Spain, Robinson Club, and individual TUI fly type-rating pipelines have their own sub-flows; follow the portal's redirect when applying for those specialised workforces.
Do I need to speak German to work at TUI Group?
It depends on the location and the brand. For Hannover and Berlin headquarters professional roles the practical floor is English at C1 plus German at B2 to C1; many product, technology, data, sustainability, and finance teams operate in English as the working language but stakeholder management, Betriebsrat engagement, and senior leadership conversations happen in German. For TUI fly Germany cockpit and cabin roles, German is required (plus aviation English at ICAO Level 4+). For UK roles in Luton, Crawley, and the Marella Cruises shoreside team, English. For source-market tour operator roles the local language is essential (Dutch for TUI Belgium and Netherlands, Polish for TUI Poland, Swedish/Norwegian/Danish/Finnish for the Nordic operations, French for TUI France). For RIU Hotels and Mallorca-based TUI Blue functions, Spanish plus English plus German for the German guest mix. State language levels honestly with CEFR ratings; inflated claims are caught in the first interview.
What is pay like and is it competitive?
TUI Group compensation is competitive within European travel and tourism norms but is generally moderate compared with the largest publicly traded multinationals in technology and finance. For Hannover and Berlin HQ salaried professional roles a base salary plus a variable Group Annual Bonus (tied to Group EBIT achievement and individual objectives) is the norm; senior roles include long-term incentive components in TUI shares. Production, ground operations, and TUI fly cabin and cockpit roles in Germany are governed by Tarifverträge (collective bargaining agreements) with ver.di, UFO, and Vereinigung Cockpit, with transparent published pay scales. UK-based corporate roles follow UK market norms with annual bonus and pension. TUI Cruises shipboard contracts pay industry-standard maritime grades plus tips for guest-facing roles. Benefits commonly include generous travel discounts (the staff travel benefit is one of the most valued in the industry), 30 days annual leave for many German contracts, betriebliche Altersvorsorge (company pension), Jobticket or Deutschlandticket subsidies, JobRad bicycle leasing, EGYM Wellpass, on-site canteens, mobile-work flexibility for compatible roles, and structured development programmes. Always name a Gehaltsvorstellung in the German application; leaving it blank is a small negative.
Where are most jobs located and is relocation supported?
Headquarters and the largest concentration of corporate, commercial, marketing, technology, finance, HR, sustainability, and group-wide functions are split between Hannover (the historical Preussag heritage HQ in Lower Saxony) and Berlin (the growing Group hub for technology, product, data, and digital functions). TUI fly Germany is based in Hannover with crew bases at Hannover, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne-Bonn, and others depending on the network. TUI Airways UK is based at Luton with crew bases across UK regional airports. TUI fly Belgium is based at Brussels and Ostend. TUI UK & Ireland tour operations are based at Crawley near Gatwick. TUI Cruises shoreside is in Hamburg. TUI Musement is headquartered in Milan. RIU Hotels is in Mallorca. Robinson Club central is connected to the Hannover Group. Hotel and resort destination roles are spread across the Mediterranean, Canary Islands, North Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and Asia. Relocation support is offered for senior and specialist hires that genuinely need it; for typical professional roles candidates are expected to fund and arrange their own relocation but People & Culture provides Blue Card and skilled-worker visa support where applicable.
What is the interview process and how long does it take?
For Hannover and Berlin HQ professional roles, plan on a People & Culture screen by phone or video (30 to 45 minutes), a hiring manager interview running 60 to 90 minutes (often hybrid: video first round, on-site second round), a panel round including a peer from an adjacent function and a skip-level leader, and for senior roles a final conversation with a member of the Group Executive Committee or the relevant segment leader. Technology and product roles include a take-home or on-site technical exercise. End-to-end timelines run four to ten weeks for HQ professional roles, longer for senior leadership and aviation. For TUI fly cockpit and cabin the process runs through assessment-day formats with simulator checks and group exercises. For TUI Cruises shipboard the process is handled through the dedicated TUI Cruises Hamburg hiring team with maritime medical and STCW certification verification. The Probezeit (probation period) is six months for most German permanent contracts; UK probationary periods are typically three to six months.
Is the Russian shareholder situation still a factor and should I be cautious about it?
It is a fair question and worth treating directly. From the late 2000s through 2022 the largest single shareholder of TUI was the Russian businessman Alexei Mordashov, holding around 32% through Unifirm Limited and related vehicles. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mordashov was placed under EU sanctions in March 2022. To preserve TUI's ability to operate normally, his shareholding was restructured: a portion was transferred to his then-wife Marina Mordashova, the voting rights of the sanctioned holding were frozen by Bafin, and the family interest was progressively diluted through capital increases the family did not subscribe to (most notably the heavily discounted 2023 rights issue). By the end of 2023 the Unifirm holding had been substantially reduced and the practical influence of the Mordashov family on TUI decisions was effectively zero. The Group operates under strict sanctions compliance overseen by the Group General Counsel and the Group Compliance function. For candidates this matters because TUI is unusually careful about communications, sanctions due diligence, and the optics of any Russia-adjacent topic. In interview, treat the topic as a professional and historical fact, not as ammunition.
How did the COVID bailout affect the company and is TUI financially healthy now?
TUI was hit harder by COVID than almost any other major European employer. The German federal government, through KfW and the Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds (WSF), extended a stabilisation package across three rounds totalling roughly 4 billion euros in loans, guarantees, and a silent participation stake, plus revolving credit facilities backed by KfW. TUI repaid the WSF silent participations and the bulk of state-backed credit lines through capital increases between 2021 and 2023, including the heavily discounted 2023 rights issue that diluted existing shareholders significantly. The company exited state aid, restored its balance sheet, and reported a record summer 2024 with strong bookings and meaningful underlying EBIT growth, followed by a positive trading update for fiscal year 2024-2025. Net debt has come down materially, the credit ratings have improved off the COVID floor, and the leverage ratio is the cleanest it has been in years. The 2024 insolvency of competitor FTI Group shifted some booking volumes to TUI and other surviving operators mid-cycle. Candidates should expect questions in interview about how to think about cyclicality, weather and event exposure, fuel hedging, and the structural shifts in European outbound tourism since the pandemic.
Does TUI hire pilots and cabin crew and how does that process work?
Yes. TUI fly Germany (Hannover-based, German AOC) hires for cockpit on Boeing 737 NG and 737 MAX 8 fleets and for cabin crew, with bases at Hannover, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne-Bonn, and others depending on network. TUI Airways UK (Luton-based, UK AOC) hires across the Boeing 737 and 787 fleets. TUI fly Belgium (Brussels and Ostend) hires for the Belgian AOC. TUIfly Nordic operates separately. Cockpit hiring requires a frozen ATPL or full ATPL with hours, current Class 1 medical, ICAO English Level 4+, type rating on the relevant Boeing fleet (or willingness and eligibility to type-rate during onboarding), and successful completion of an assessment day combining HR interviews, simulator checks, and base preference. Captain upgrades are a separate, more demanding process. Cabin crew hiring involves a Cabin Crew Attestation, language profile, customer-service tenure, height and swim requirements, and an assessment day with group exercises and role plays. UFO (Unabhängige Flugbegleiter Organisation) represents cabin crew at TUI fly Germany; Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) represents cockpit. Strikes and collective bargaining periodically affect hiring pipelines. Apply at careers.tuigroup.com using the Aviation function filter.
Does TUI hire for cruise ships and how is that different from shoreside roles?
Yes. TUI Cruises (the 50/50 joint venture with Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, operating the German-language Mein Schiff fleet from Hamburg) and Hapag-Lloyd Cruises (the luxury and expedition subsidiary of TUI Cruises, operating the Europa, Europa 2, Hanseatic Inspiration, Hanseatic Nature, and Hanseatic Spirit) hire shipboard staff across deck, engine, hotel operations, F&B, entertainment, medical, and guest services. Marella Cruises (UK-flagged, wholly owned) hires for its UK-based fleet. Shipboard hiring is handled through the dedicated cruise hiring team, with assessment partners for maritime medical (ENG1 or equivalent), STCW basic safety training certificates with current revalidations, role-specific certifications (food safety, medical, marine engineering CoC), passport validity, criminal record certificate, and language profile (German plus English for Mein Schiff; German plus English plus often a third European language for Hapag-Lloyd's international guest mix on expedition voyages). Contracts are voyage-based (typically four to six months on, two months off), with industry-standard maritime grades plus tips for guest-facing roles. Shoreside cruise roles in Hamburg follow the Group HQ pattern via careers.tuigroup.com.
What is the apprenticeship and graduate programme like?
TUI Group runs a sizeable Ausbildung (apprenticeship) programme out of Hannover and the German operating sites, covering commercial (Kaufleute), industrial, IT (Fachinformatiker), tourism (Tourismuskaufleute), and aviation specialties. Postings appear in autumn for an August or September start the following year; apply early. The Group Graduate Trainee Programme is structured around two-year cross-functional rotations with international placements, typically across two to four functions and two to three locations including a stretch in another European source-market or a hotel/cruise destination. The programme is highly competitive and recruits a small annual cohort across business and technology streams. Werkstudent (working student) and Praktikum (internship) postings appear year-round on the same careers portal. Eligibility for the German apprenticeships requires German language proficiency at B2 to C1 and a Hauptschulabschluss, Realschulabschluss, or Abitur depending on the specialty. Eligibility for the Graduate Trainee Programme typically requires a completed bachelor's or master's degree with strong grades, relevant internships, and English plus German fluency.
Is TUI a good place to work for someone who cares about sustainability?
Yes, with realistic expectations. TUI's sustainability strategy is structured around a People, Planet, Progress framework with measurable targets: a Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitment aligned to a 1.5C trajectory, an airline net-zero ambition by 2050 with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) uptake commitments, hotel emissions intensity reduction targets, supply-chain due diligence under the German LkSG and EU CSRD, biodiversity and water targets at hotel level, and the TUI Care Foundation programme funding destination community projects. The realistic framing: tourism is energy-intensive and the sector decarbonisation pathway is genuinely difficult, particularly for aviation where SAF supply is constrained and expensive. TUI is one of the most ambitious large European tourism employers on this agenda, but the work is hard and slow. Candidates who can engage with both the ambition and the constraints honestly do well in interviews. The Sustainable Development team in Hannover is a real career path; sustainability is also embedded across the operating brands rather than only in a central function.
What is the culture like and how does co-determination shape day-to-day work?
The Group Hannover and Berlin HQ culture is professional, structured, and genuinely international, with a calmer pace than US tech but a faster pace than the most traditional German Mittelstand companies. Du-Kultur (mutual first-name address) is widespread and genuine in many teams, especially in the Berlin tech and product hubs and across the international source-market teams; Sie-Kultur persists in some senior and finance functions. Mitbestimmung (co-determination) is a real institutional fact: the Supervisory Board has employee representation, plant-level Betriebsrat works councils are present at major German sites, the Group Works Council coordinates across entities, and ver.di represents corporate and ground staff while UFO and Vereinigung Cockpit represent cabin and cockpit at TUI fly Germany. For management, HR, finance, legal, and operations candidates, the practical implication is that significant change projects (restructuring, IT replatforms, working-time changes, headcount moves, brand integrations) require structured engagement with the Betriebsrat in good time, that Tarifverhandlungen periodically affect operational decisions, and that strikes are part of the operating reality at TUI fly Germany. Constructive engagement with this structure is a competence the company hires for. The brand promise is built around delivering meaningful holiday memories at scale; teams genuinely centre customer outcomes and a customer-facing or destination tour through the assessment process is common across senior roles.

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Sources

  1. TUI Group Annual Report 2024 — TUI Group AG
  2. TUI Group Careers Portal — TUI Group AG (Radancy TalentBrew)
  3. TUI Group Sustainability Strategy: People, Planet, Progress — TUI Group AG
  4. Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds: TUI Stabilisation Package — German Federal Ministry of Finance / WSF
  5. EU Sanctions: Council Regulation amendments designating Alexei Mordashov (March 2022) — European Union (EUR-Lex)
  6. TUI Group Capital Increase 2023 — Rights Issue Prospectus — TUI Group AG
  7. TUI Group Q3 / Trading Update FY 2024 — TUI Group AG
  8. Vereinigung Cockpit and UFO Collective Bargaining at TUI fly Germany — Vereinigung Cockpit e.V. / UFO e.V.