TUI Travel boosted by all-inclusive holidays abroad TUI experienced sales growth in summer holidays at its businesses across Europe, with particularly strong gains in the Nordic countries, Poland and the Netherlands. The only exception was France, where sales of its summer programme dipped 3pc as more French families chose to holiday at home. Mr Long said the company had outperformed the rest of the market in what remained a "challenging macroeconomic environment." TUI's long-standing strategy of offering holidays at exclusive resorts which can not be booked through any other company was paying off, Mr Long said, proving the package holiday - once thought to be in structural decline - was "far from dead." Mr Long said TUI had also benefited from reduced competition in a year when its chief rival, Thomas Cook, had to seek a £1.4bn lifeline from its lenders. "There's a lot of structural change going on in the industry but we are a net benefactor of that change," Mr Long said. The main driver of that is the fact we have a very broad range of exclusive holidays designed and that gives us a very different position from the rest of the market where a lot of what most companies offer is the same as everybody else. TUI said in a trading update that bookings for winter holidays were "encouraging," with UK sales 5pc ahead of the same point last year. Summer bookings for 2013 across the group were also 10pc ahead of the same period last year. Mr Long said many British households were still willing to cut back on other luxuries to safeguard their annual break in the sun. "Customers will forgo other items of expenditure to have their overseas holiday," he said. TUI will unveil a "roadmap" for growth at its full-year results on December 4.