European holidays to restart in July, tourism to recover by 2022 - TUI CEO says

LONDON, May 13 (Reuters) - Tourism will recover to its pre-coronavirus levels by 2022 at the latest and European holidays will restart in July said Fritz Joussen, the chief executive of travel group TUI.

"I think in 2022, the latest, we will see a full recovery of tourism," he told reporters on a call.

TUI said earlier on Wednesday it needed to slash costs to cope with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, and Joussen said that the company would in future be flexible about whether it owns assets or not.

He said while he believed TUI needed to continue to have its own airline business, the shape of it could be different in future, and the company would be looking at whether it should own or lease aircraft plus the number of airlines it operates.

"Selling all the airlines I think is maybe not realistic," Joussen said. "Three years ago we had six airlines, now we have three airlines is it right to have three? These are the questions we need to put forward."

(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by Michael Holden)