Tourism boom: Eurowings founds its own tour operator - Get updated on what's happening in tourism!

Eurowings, Germany's largest leisure airline and part of the Lufthansa Group, is expanding its business segment and establishing its own tour operator under the name Eurowings Holidays. The new company has already been entered in the commercial register in Cologne as Eurowings Holidays GmbH and will officially start operations on 1 April 2025.

With this strategic start-up, Eurowings is setting an important milestone in the growing tourism business. Eurowings Holidays GmbH is taking over the staff and tourism IT systems of well-known media and tourism entrepreneur Karlheinz Kögel in Baden-Baden (whose businesses include the HLX Group) in order to rapidly implement and utilize proven expertise. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price of the transfer. In the initial phase, around 100 tourism experts will work for Eurowings Holidays, of which more than 50 employees will come from Binoli GmbH, a subsidiary of Kögel's HLX Group. 

Kögel, who also owns the market research company Media Control, is regarded as a pioneer of the dynamic tour operator model, which enables more individual holiday offers than the classic package tour. As the founder of tour operator L'Tur, Kögel successfully established last-minute travel in the market. Since 2020, the HLX Group has also built up the Eurowings Holidays holiday brand and has developed it into a relevant player in the German tourism industry within a short space of time. 

Tailor-made holidays for more than 20 million customers

The new company under the umbrella of the Lufthansa Group will create a tour operator that can offer customized holidays from a single source – including for more than 20 million customers who have mainly booked flights with Eurowings to date. In future, the company will offer flexible travel packages that include hotel accommodation, transfers, etc. in addition to flights. With low deposits and the option to rebook free of charge as well as to cancel at a reasonable price, Eurowings Holidays offers maximum flexibility in holiday planning.

The expansion to a more data-driven business model and the integration of advanced technologies are key factors for future growth. Eurowings Digital GmbH, a company with expertise in the fields of e-commerce, data science and artificial intelligence (AI), will make a significant contribution to the further development of Eurowings Holidays. The Eurowings Digital subsidiary based in Cologne's Schanzenstraße start-up district has grown dynamically since its founding in 2018 and now employs almost 300 digital experts from 36 countries around the world.

The next step in Eurowings' tourism expansion has come at the right time: under CEO Jens Bischof, Eurowings has developed from an airline primarily focused on business travel into a leading and commercially successful holiday airline. Among other things, Eurowings operates a base on Europe's favorite sunny island of Mallorca and offers more than 400 weekly connections between Palma and 26 different airports during the high season. Eurowings is also the undisputed market leader at German locations such as Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Cologne and Stuttgart.

Eurowings CEO Jens Bischof: “We are combining our leading position in holiday flights with excellent package tour and digital expertise. We are thus strengthening our business model and developing into an innovative force in the growing tourism market. The high profile and popularity of our brand will help to establish Eurowings Holidays among the ‘top ten’ German tour operators in the near future.”

Karlheinz Kögel: “The Eurowings Holidays brand has made a significant contribution to the outstanding development of the HLX Group, which counted 333,000 guests last year and generated revenue of 275 million euros. It is not easy for me to sell significant parts of this successful business segment, but it also fills me with pride that we have turned our dynamic tour operator into a real success story with a great deal of passion and meticulousness. My sincere thanks go to our joint team, whose excellent work made this success possible in the first place.”

Image Credit: © Eurowings