Shares in TUI Travel were up on the FTSE 100 in morning trading after the company issued a trading update ahead of its interim statement for the six months ended 31 March.

The group said that underlying trading in the period had been satisfactory and that its winter programmes had been fully sold and summer bookings higher than that of the previous year.

TUI also said that it had achieved planned load factors, although not in Tunisia and Egypt, thanks to the political unrest in those countries. The impact of the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia in the second quarter is "expected to be in line with previous guidance", the company said.

Peter Long, Chief Executive of TUI Travel, commented, ''Since our last update, trading has been in line with our expectations against a tough comparative period.

"Following the political events in Egypt and Tunisia our experience has been that customers continue to want to go on holiday with us, albeit to alternative destinations. The flexibility we have in our business model has allowed us to actively re-shape our programmes across all our source markets to satisfy this demand and we have moved significant capacity to a number of other destinations including Spain, Greece and Turkey. We are also working closely with our suppliers in Egypt and Tunisia to ensure that the programmes which are on sale offer extremely good value for our customers.

"We have very few holidays left to sell for the winter. As we approach the summer season, having re-shaped our programmes and in the light of recent geo-political events, we are pleased with our trading particularly for differentiated products where demand is high and which tend to achieve higher margins."

By 10:25 shares in TUI Travel were up 2.31 per cent on the FTSE 100 to 234.60 pence per share.

FTSE Egypt Tunisia