Tourist branch: the fight against low cost and Internet News 17 July 2014 , No hay comentarios Summer is here to stay some weeks and many people in the world take their holidays. Some figures published at the end of 2013 promised a rosy year in the sector: 4-5% growth forecast driven mainly by emergings, although Europe and North America were expected to show also a solid growth. Trends in tourism have deeply changed: people shorten their holidays and the destinations are more diverse (not only the beach), but the strongest change is related to the companies. The irruption of Internet has meant the biggest revolution, as people are independent from traditional tour operators and the supply has expanded: low cost hotels and flights, internet travel agencies and holidays organized by oneself instead the traditional all-inclusive. What is the impact in the stock exchanges for this branch? Well, we focus today in four big European companies: the biggest hotel chains and tour operators. The British group Intercontinental Hotels obtained US$ 1,903 million in revenues in 2013, a 3,7% more. The profit increased also a 5%, US$ till 420 million. French Accor hotel group revenues decreased a 2% in 2013, till €5,536 million, while the net profit reached €126 million, after the losses in 2012. The German-British tour operator TUI improved the revenues a 4% in 2013, till GBP 15,051 million. However, the net profit halved till GBP 63 million. The Swiss tour operator Kuoni decreased its revenues a 3%, till CHF 5.669 million, while the company obtain again a profit of CHF 69.2 million, compared with the losses in 2012. The comparison in the main data made by T-Advisor has the following results: Performance YTD Volatility YTD Score Liquidity VaR 1 week Intercontinental 12.53 % 20.48% 8.76 8 -4.41% Accor 7.43% 18.53% 5.80 9 -4.93% TUI -5.51% 26.96 % 4.64 8 -6.13% Kuoni -20.30% 22.34% 2.92 7 -5.45% Fundamental figures show the trend: the traditional companies are not very profitable if we compare the result with the revenues. Figures from T-Advisor point out that tour operators are not under the investors’ view: performance and score are quite bad. However, hotel chains have still some interest, with a good performance in the first half of the year, taking into account that the tourist branch was very affected by the current crisis.