Registry · TUI1

Does TUI support Israel?

TUI AG

Business presence documentedupdated 2026-09-25

TUI does business in Israel — we found records of its operations there, but no record of donations, aid, or a public statement of support. Every claim below links to its source.

Filed under: Hotels & travel companies · Companies that support Israel

Background

TUI's Israel record is commercial, not philanthropic. No donation, aid, in-kind gift, employee-matching scheme or public statement of support for Israel was found for TUI AG or any of its brands. What the record shows is a travel group that has sold Israel as a destination for years — package tours through its German, Dutch, Belgian, British and French operators, scheduled flights by its airlines, cruise calls at Haifa and Ashdod through the TUI Cruises joint venture it half-owns with Royal Caribbean, tours and tickets through TUI Musement, and a 50% stake in the Israeli travel company Holiday Travel (Israel) Limited at Airport City next to Ben Gurion Airport — and that has pulled that business back in every escalation since 2014, each time on stated safety and government-advisory grounds and never with a political message. These are separate actors and are kept separate here: TUI AG, its national tour operators, its airlines, its half-owned cruise venture and its Israeli joint venture are not interchangeable. Advocacy research has repeatedly documented TUI itineraries that crossed into occupied territory while describing it as Israel: GLAN and SOMO in March 2021 (TUI Belgium, Netherlands, UK and France), Who Profits, which lists TUI Group for "services to the settlements" and says its booking site offered six East Jerusalem hotels as being in "Israel", and an 80-organisation report of September 2025 that still found a Hebron settler-bus tour and a Dead Sea tour routed through Area C. TUI did not answer the 2021 researchers, and no public TUI response to any of these findings was found. Two things cut the other way: TUI is not named in the UN OHCHR database of businesses linked to Israeli settlements (A/HRC/60/19), where Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia are; and as checked on 25 September 2026 its Israel and Jerusalem tour listings are empty or marked discontinued, though the destination pages remain and still place occupied East Jerusalem in Israel. Absence of a donation record is not proof that none exists — only that a search of news, company filings, the UN and advocacy databases, US federal contract, lobbying and political-donation records, and the Hebrew and Arabic press did not turn one up.

TUI AG, Annual Report 2025 — list of shareholdings (joint ventures and associates) GLAN & SOMO, "Tainted tourism" (March 2021) — via Wayback Machine "Trading with Illegal Settlements" (September 2025), hosted by UN UNISPAL Who Profits (advocacy research centre) UN OHCHR database of business enterprises involved in Israeli settlements (A/HRC/60/19)

Timeline of documented records

20142016201820202022202420262014-07 — Operations in Israel: TUI Deutschland's Israel programme and TUI fly's Israel routesOperations in Israel2014-072016-03 — Operations in Israel: Munich–Tel Aviv route (Israel)Operations in Israel2016-032021-03 — Operations in Israel: Israel package tours sold by TUI's Belgian, Dutch, British and French branchesOperations in Israel2021-032023-09 — Operations in Israel: Antwerp–Tel Aviv route (Israel)Operations in Israel2023-092023-10 — Operations in Israel: Haifa and Ashdod port calls (Israel)Operations in Israel2023-102023-10 — Operations in Israel: TUI Nederland's Israel programmeOperations in Israel2023-102025-09 — Operations in Israel: Settlement and occupied-territory tours listed by TUI and its subsidiariesOperations in Israel2025-092025-09 — Partnership: Holiday Travel (Israel) Limited, Airport City, IsraelPartnership2025-092026-09 — Operations in Israel: TUI Musement's Israel destination pagesOperations in Israel2026-09

Documented records

TypeDateAmountRecipientSources
Operations in Israel2014-07-10—TUI Deutschland's Israel programme and TUI fly's Israel routes
Suspended its Israel packages during the 2014 Gaza war while keeping its flights: TUI Deutschland announced on Thursday 10 July 2014 — reported the same day by Reuters and AFP — that it had "cancelled all tours in the country until 31 July inclusive", citing a German Foreign Ministry advisory against unnecessary stays within 40 km of the Gaza Strip, and offered affected customers a free change of date or destination. Ynet, reporting on 13 July, said TUI would keep flying to Israel and put its network at three weekly flights, to Munich, Stuttgart and Cologne, with a fourth Munich frequency due the following month. Reporting differs on the scope: TUI’s own quoted statement covers tours only, while The Times of Israel, relaying Dutch broadcaster NOS, described the German branch as suspending flights as well. Separately, TUI Nederland cancelled its Eilat tours and flights on 15 July 2014 — sold through its Benelux brands Arke and Kras — affecting a few dozen passengers.
Operations in Israel2016-03-07—Munich–Tel Aviv route (Israel)
Put its German airline back on Tel Aviv: TUI fly (then TUIfly) returned to Israel with two weekly Munich–Tel Aviv round trips from 7 March 2016, flown by Boeing 737-800s, at a starting fare of 218 euros return — undercutting El Al and Lufthansa on the same route. TUI's representative in Israel, Moni Bar, said the group intended to grow its Israel business and would consider further routes if the Munich line worked, and the airline's chief executive framed the aim as bringing German tourists to Israel.
Operations in Israel2021-03—Israel package tours sold by TUI's Belgian, Dutch, British and French branches
Documented itineraries that crossed into occupied territory and were sold as Israel: research by the Global Legal Action Network and SOMO, published March 2021, recorded that TUI Belgium's eight-day "Back to the beginning: Israel" tour included a wine tasting in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, sites in occupied East Jerusalem and hours in Bethlehem, all presented as inside Israel; that TUI Netherlands' "Israel and Jordan" tour took in the Qasr al-Yahud baptismal site and the Golan; that TUI UK's 2020 seven-day "Israel Through the Ages" package visited the Israeli settlement of Katzrin, billed as the "capital of the Golan", with a winery stop and an optional tunnel tour of the City of David, a site run by the settler organisation Elad Foundation; and that TUI France listed two tours under "Israel-West Bank (Palestine)" without marking where the itinerary crossed the line. The researchers wrote to TUI before publication and received no response. The finding that these are occupied places improperly marketed as Israel is GLAN and SOMO's characterisation; the itinerary contents are quoted from TUI's own national websites as they stood in late 2020.
One source
Operations in Israel2023-09—Antwerp–Tel Aviv route (Israel)
Had a new Israel route on its schedule when the war began: TUI fly Belgium was booked to open a nonstop Antwerp–Tel Aviv service with two weekly flights from 14 December 2023, reported by the Israeli travel site Tourist Israel in a piece first published in March 2023 and updated on 28 September 2023, nine days before the 7 October attacks. No record was found of the route actually operating, and TUI's Israel selling was pulled across its markets that autumn. This rests on a single source and is recorded as a scheduled plan, not as flights flown.
One source
Operations in Israel2023-10-12—Haifa and Ashdod port calls (Israel)
Dropped its Israeli port calls within days of 7 October 2023: TUI Cruises cancelled Mein Schiff 5's calls at Haifa on 11 October and Ashdod on 12 October 2023, on a week-long Eastern Mediterranean sailing that had left Trieste on 1 October, then cancelled the same two calls on 25–26 October for the voyage leaving Heraklion on 22 October, substituting Marmaris in Turkey and Santorini in Greece both times. TUI Cruises GmbH is not a wholly owned TUI business: TUI AG's own 2025 annual report lists it among joint ventures and associates at a 50% capital share, the other half held by Royal Caribbean.
Operations in Israel2023-10-17—TUI Nederland's Israel programme
Cancelled the rest of its Dutch Israel season: TUI confirmed on 17 October 2023 that it was calling off all trips from the Netherlands to Israel for the remainder of the year, saying it wanted to give customers clarity while the Dutch government's advisory against non-essential travel stood. The company said the decision mainly hit five group tours booked through Goed Idee Reizen, a Christian-travel brand of TUI Nederland, plus a small number of individual bookings; all travellers were offered a rebooking or a refund.
Operations in Israel2025-09-15—Settlement and occupied-territory tours listed by TUI and its subsidiaries
Still carried settlement itineraries four years later, on the record of an 80-organisation report: "Trading with Illegal Settlements", published on 15 September 2025 and hosted by the UN's UNISPAL library, named TUI as one of eight target companies and found that TUI and its subsidiaries continued to list tours to Israeli settlements as of 2025 — a "Dual Narrative Tour" taking visitors to Hebron in a "bullet-proof settler bus" to spend half a day with Israeli settlers and half with a Palestinian family, shown as sold out at the time of publication; and a Masada and Dead Sea tour whose own page said that if Masada were unavailable travellers would instead tour the Qumran caves and the Qasr el Yahud baptismal site, both in Area C of the occupied West Bank. Separately, Who Profits, an Israeli advocacy research centre, lists TUI Group under "settlement enterprise — services to the settlements" and states that TUI's booking site offered six hotels and guided tours in occupied East Jerusalem, filing the properties as located in "Israel"; its profile is marked valid to 6 June 2025. The report's authors note that companies in this sector suspended tours after October 2023 on safety grounds and that, to their knowledge, none had stopped on legal or humanitarian grounds before the research began. The legal characterisation belongs to those organisations, not to us.
Operations in Israel2026-09-25—TUI Musement's Israel destination pages
Where the Israel offer stands on TUI's own sites today, checked directly: TUI Musement keeps destination pages for sites inside occupied East Jerusalem and files them under Israel — the City of David page sits at the breadcrumb "Home / Israel / Things to do in Jerusalem / City of David" and gives the location as "City of David Jerusalem Israel", and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre page in the Old City does the same — but both show "0 Experiences", the Jerusalem listing is empty, and the whole of Israel has one bookable item, a data eSIM. The URL the September 2025 report cited for the Hebron Dual Narrative Tour now redirects to that empty Jerusalem listing. The Masada and Dead Sea page on musement.com, TUI Musement's own consumer brand, still carries the wording about touring the Qumran caves and Qasr el Yahud instead, but its structured data marks the product Discontinued. In short: the products are gone or shown as discontinued, while the geography on the site still places occupied East Jerusalem in Israel.
Partnership2025-09-30—Holiday Travel (Israel) Limited, Airport City, Israel
Holds half of an Israeli travel company, on its own filings: TUI AG's list of shareholdings as at its 30 September 2025 balance sheet date records Holiday Travel (Israel) Limited of Airport City, Israel, with a capital share of 50%, under "joint ventures and associates — tourism" — a non-controlling stake rather than a consolidated subsidiary. Airport City is the business park beside Ben Gurion Airport. The figure matches the 50% holding Who Profits attributes to TUI. Across the whole of TUI's Annual Report 2025 this joint venture is the only place Israel appears.

Frequently asked questions

Did TUI donate money to Israel or Israeli causes?

We have no records of donations. What is on record is commercial activity in Israel (Operations in Israel, Partnership), which is not the same as support — see the records on this page.

Where does this information come from?

Every record on this page links to its source — news reports, official company statements, tax filings, or government records. 21 distinct sources are cited for TUI. Our methodology page explains the full verification process.

Sources & citations

Record last updated: 2026-09-25

Companies with documented support