TUI AG is a German multinational travel and tourism company headquartered in Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany. Until 2001 it was an industrial and transportation company named Preussag AG, which in the mid-1990s decided to reinvent itself as a tourism, shipping, and logistics company. It sold off many of its industrial concerns and purchased several major travel and transportation firms. Today it is one of the world's largest tourist firms with interests across Europe. It owns travel agencies, hotels, airlines, cruise ships and retail stores. Major subsidiaries include TUI AG Airlines, the largest holiday fleet in Europe as well as UK-based tour operators Thomson and First Choice. Its common brand TUIfly encompasses 7 airlines. TUI AG was also one of the world's largest shipping companies, having its logistics activities bundled within Hapag-Lloyd AG and concentrated on the shipping sector. Hapag-Lloyd is no longer an operating unit of the business however, a majority stake having been sold to the Albert Ballin consortium of investors in March 2009. Finally, TUI AG has 38.4 percent of the shares, but is expected to sell much of the Hapag stake to Ballin in February 2012, as it works to exit from the shipping business and to optimize its tourism business with expansion in Russia, China and India. Wikipedia [ - ]

TUI AG is a German multinational travel and tourism company headquartered in Hannover, Lower... [ + ]