TUI Musement becomes global Tours & Activities partner for Travel Counsellors

• TUI Musement platform with experiences in over 100 countries integrated within Travel Counsellors platform Phenix
• Thousands of excursions, activities and attractions tickets now available to 2,100+ community of travel entrepreneurs
• Integration enables development of more bespoke travel itineraries
• TUI Musement continues Tours & Activities growth

TUI Musement, the Tours & Activities division of TUI Group, is partnering with Travel Counsellors, the UK’s largest and fast-growing technology platform for travel entrepreneurs. TUI Musement will integrate its platform with Travel Counsellors’ existing digital infrastructure. The partnership continues TUI’s strong growth in Tours & Activities and reinforces TUI Musement’s position as the leading B2B partner for excursions, activities and attraction tickets.

Through a merchant API integration within Phenix, Travel Counsellors’ digital, personal platform, over 2,100 independent business owners can now access TUI Musement’s curated portfolio of excursions, activities, and attraction tickets in city-break and beach destinations worldwide. This collaboration builds on Travel Counsellors success and enables business owners to plan travel itineraries and seamlessly book the best experiences worldwide, along with other travel products, in one single platform.

“Expanding our partnership with TUI Musement is an exciting development as it empowers Travel Counsellors business owners to offer a more comprehensive, personalised and customised product that meets and exceeds the demands of our customers.” Said Simon Ward, Director of Supplier Partner Connectivity and Strategy at Travel Counsellors. “We know that highly tailored experiences are top of mind for customers, and Travel Counsellors now provides access to the best excursions, activities and attraction tickets.”  

This agreement builds upon a longstanding and successful relationship between TUI Musement and Travel Counsellors, with TUI Musement already offering multi-day tour itineraries to the community.

“Travel Counsellors is an exceptional organisation with a highly dedicated community that demands cutting-edge technology, outstanding service and reliable products. TUI Musement is meeting those needs, and we are delighted to further strengthen this partnership,” said Nishank Gopalkrishnan, Chief Commercial Officer at TUI Musement. “While expanding partnerships is always exciting, this collaboration is particularly meaningful as it allows us to diversify our distribution channels and engage with another dynamic segment of the travel industry. Moreover, this agreement solidifies our standing as the preferred Tours & Activities partner for top-tier travel companies.”

The Travel Counsellors community will have access to a diverse and curated portfolio of thousands of excursions, activities, and attraction tickets. This includes TUI Collection excursions visiting La Sagrada Familia, the Colosseum and Burj Khalifa, as well as unique National Geographic Day Tours telling The Untold Story of Central Park or exploring the Behind the Scenes work at Lisbon’s Oceanario Odyssey. All experiences offered by TUI Musement undergo regular and rigorous audits to ensure compliance with health and safety standards, sustainability practices, and quality assurance.

About TUI Group

The TUI Group is one of the world’s leading tourism groups and operates worldwide. The Group is headquartered in Germany. TUI shares are listed in the MDAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and in the regulated market of the Lower Saxony Stock Exchange in Hanover. TUI Group offers its 20 million customers integrated services from a single source and forms the entire tourism value chain under one roof. The Group owns over 400 hotels and resorts with premium brands such as RIU, TUI Blue and Robinson and 17 cruise ships, ranging from the MS Europa and MS Europa 2 in the luxury class and expedition ships in the HANSEATIC class to the Mein Schiff fleet of TUI Cruises and cruise ships operated by Marella Cruises in the UK. The Group also includes Europe’s leading tour operator brands and online marketing platforms, for example for hotel-only or flight-only offers, five airlines with more than 130 modern medium- and long-haul aircraft and around 1,200 travel agencies. In addition to expanding its core business with hotels and cruises via successful joint ventures and activities in vacation destinations, TUI is increasingly focusing on the expansion of digital platforms. The Group is transforming itself into a global tourism platform company.   

Global responsibility for sustainable economic, environmental and social action is at the heart of our corporate culture. With projects in 25 countries, the TUI Care Foundation initiated by TUI focuses on the positive effects of tourism, on education and training and on strengthening environmental and social standards. In this way, it supports the development of vacation destinations. The globally active TUI Care Foundation initiates projects that create new opportunities for the next generation.

About TUI Musement

TUI Musement is a global Tours & Activities business that combines a highly curated product portfolio, scalable digital platforms and in-destination service by local teams, to source, develop, distribute and deliver products in three categories:

• Experiences: Excursions, activities & attraction tickets
• Transfers: Between airports, hotels and ports
• Tours: Multi-day itineraries encompassing flights, hotels, experiences and transfers

Available in all major beach and city destinations, products are sourced from leading travel businesses or developed in-house by TUI teams, including the TUI Collection, the flagship experiences portfolio of TUI Group, and National Geographic Day Tours, unique and immersive small group guided experiences.

Products are distributed to customers, including the 19+ million TUI customers, through TUI websites and apps – such as the Tours & Activities dedicated TUI Musement app, as well as in-destination local teams and B2B partners, including some of the world’s leading OTAs, tour operators, airlines, hotels, travel agencies and cruise lines. TUI Musement is one of the major growth areas of the TUI Group and employs approximately 7,000 people worldwide.

About Travel Counsellors

Vitruvian Partners-backed Travel Counsellors is the UK’s largest and fast-growing technology platform for travel entrepreneurs that connects over 2,100 independent business owners, ultimately enabling them to deliver exceptional levels of customer service. In the year to 31 October 2023, Total Transaction Value (“TTV”) on the platform was more than £900m, up more than 20% against the prior year. Travel Counsellors operates across six countries (UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, and the UAE) and employs 300 people in its UK headquarters and overseas offices. The Company provides a high touch, digitally enabled platform, that enables and empowers travel counsellors, who are travel entrepreneurs and small business owners, to harness innovative and constantly evolving tools and technology to build their businesses in a way that suits them, with limitless potential and scale. This is underpinned by the knowledge and power of a global community and strong people-first culture.

The company operates its own ATOL supported financial trust which safeguards customers from any failure of a travel supplier involved in their booking. Travel Counsellors is multi-award-winning and has a five star, ‘Excellent’ rating on Trustpilot. It was founded in 1994. In 2024, Steve Byrne, CEO of Travel Counsellors, was honoured with International Entrepreneur at the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in the North region. Meanwhile, in 2024, Travel Counsellors was recognised as Top Luxury Agency and Top Business Travel Agency at the TTG Top 50 Awards. Additionally, the company was awarded as one of the Sunday Times Best Places to Work 2024 and recognised in the E2E Dynamic 100 Track which featured privately owned UK based companies with a turnover of more than £25 million over the past two years.