TUI AG (LON:TUI) led the way as a raft of business unveiled plans to restart or reopen businesses today.
The travel group said an easing of lockdown restrictions would enable it to resume holidays in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Switzerland from mid-June.
UK holidays will start later, the group said, though it added bookings here were encouraging.
Winter 2020/21 bookings for the UK are up 6% with ASP (online) up 5% but the travel operator said it remains early in the booking cycle.
“Summer 2021 continues to look promising,”
TUI said it started its summer season yesterday with two fully booked flights from Germany to Majorca.
A further 20 departures are planned in the coming days and include Faro as a second destination.
From July, TUI expects to increase the number of destinations to include Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Portugal, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
“Based on our current restart dates, we are planning to operate around 30% of our original capacity in Q4 2020,” said the statement.
TUI added that around 25% of summer bookings have been sold with a notable increase over the last week and Germany and Belgium seeing strong recoveries.
Earlier, Cineworld Group PLC (LON:CINE) had announced it intends to open cinemas in the UK and US on 10th July and have all of its 787-strong estate showing films again by the end of the month.
Greggs PLC (LON:GRG) , meanwhile, said it would open 800 shops to takeaway customers on Thursday with its whole estate to be opened by early July.
The news follows the start of shopping again for many people after lockdown restrictions on non-essential shops were eased yesterday with social media awash with pictures of people queuing to get into Primark in particular.
TUI shares jumped 7% to 483.5p.