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TUI Travel plc, the world’s largest tour operator that is a major retailer of cruises and operator of five ships on the UK market, has staged a strong recovery in earnings in its latest financial year.

Group pre-tax profit amounted to £144 million in financial year to 30 September compared to a loss of £73 million in the same period a year earlier. Revenues increased to £14.7 billion from £13.5 billion. Cost savings and diversification of its product range helped the London based company to achieve the improvement, it said in a statement, adding that online sales had played a key role in it.

“We are very pleased with our robust performance in 2011 and have delivered another year of profit growth, against a backdrop of unrest in key North African destinations and weak consumer sentiment in some source markets,” said Peter Long, Chief Executive Officer.

“The UK, Nordic region, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Austria delivered record results. These achievements reflect the strength of our strategy to increase differentiated and exclusive product sales, increase controlled distribution with a focus on online to enhance our customer access and reduce distribution costs, and our delivery of the turnaround and cost efficiency programmes.”

“We remain focused on this successful strategy and through our new business improvement programme we have self help measures in place to help offset the difficult macro-economic environment, including clear plans in place for Germany and France. In addition, we continue to strengthen our cash flow in order to fund the dividend and growth. All of which means that, even in the current challenging market conditions, we continue to operate from a position of strength,” Long said.