TUI AG (German: Touristik Union International) is a German multinational travel and tourism company headquartered in Hanover. Until 2001 it was an industrial and transportation company named Preussag AG, which in the mid-1990s decided to reinvent itself as a tourism, shipping, and logistics company. It sold off many of its industrial concerns and purchased several major travel and transportation firms.
Today it is one of the world's largest tourist firms with interests across Europe. It owns travel agencies, hotels, airlines, cruise ships and retail stores. Major subsidiaries include TUI AG Airlines, the largest holiday fleet in Europe. Its common brand TUIfly encompasses 7 airlines.
TUI AG was also one of the world's largest shipping companies, having its logistics activities bundled within Hapag-Lloyd AG and concentrated on the shipping sector. Hapag-Lloyd is no longer an operating unit of the business however, a majority stake having been sold to the Albert Ballin consortium of investors in March 2009. TUI retains a 43.3% stake in the firm and continues to wholly own and operate the cruise line Hapag-Lloyd Kreuzfahrten.
