Tui Travel - nice package What goes around, comes around. Along with Dr Martens boots and wallpaper, that seems to include package holidays. Their share of the UK overseas holiday market slid from over 50 per cent a decade ago to under 38 per cent in 2009, as travellers capitalised on aggressive pricing by budget airlines and devised their own trips online. Since then, however, the package portion has crept back over 40 per cent, and seems to be holding its ground. Quite why is debatable. Travel companies like to cite "the value proposition" they are offering. That, though, rather begs the question. Perhaps straitened times make holidays more prized, so the better consumer protection attaching to many packages - remember volcanic ash? - may be one consideration. More fundamentally, low-cost carriers have been pushing up prices on many routes. Add in extra charges now levied, and ultra-cheap DIY alternatives are less easily concocted. The package industry's own offerings have also become more sophisticated. All of which contributed to better-than-expected results for the year to end-September at Tui Travel, the UK's largest tour operator by customer numbers. Profit before interest and tax (excluding one-off items) rose 4 per cent to £490m. Revenues were down 2 per cent at £14.5bn, but up by a similar amount in constant currency terms. The main drivers were strong profit and margin growth in the UK, although revenues were flat, and stable results in the higher-margin Nordic region. Now Tui is targeting a 7-10 per cent annual advance in operating profits over the next five years. That is bold, though not impossible if European market margins improve - France remains loss-making - and more growth is achieved in the UK. But Tui shares have already risen 40 per cent in the past six months and trade on a 10 times forward multiple. That leaves little room for error.