It fully or partially owns several travel agencies, hotel chains, cruise lines and retail shops as well as five European airlines.

It was incorporated on 9 October 1923, as Preußische Bergwerks- und Hütten-Aktiengesellschaft (Prussian Mine and Foundry Company).

At that time, Hapag-Lloyd held a 30% interest in the tourism conglomerate TUI (founded 1968), increased to 100% by 1999.

A majority stake in Hapag-Lloyd was sold to the Albert Ballin consortium of investors in March 2009[16] and a further stake was sold to Ballin in February 2012, as TUI worked to exit from the shipping business and to optimize its tourism business with expansion in Russia, China and India under Michael Frenzel.

[18] In June 2014, the company announced it would fully merge with TUI Travel to create a united group with a value of $US9.7 billion.

[19] The merger was completed on 17 December 2014 and the combined business began trading on the Frankfurt and London stock exchanges.

[24] Berge & Meer and Boomerang Reisen as well as Atraveo were sold to the holding company GENUI in 2019.

[25] At the end of 2019, the holiday home provider Wolters Reisen GmbH and the round trip specialist Wolters Rundreisen GmbH, of which TUI Group owned 100% of the shares via an investment company, were sold to the Frankfurt-based company e-domizil.

[26] In August 2020, the company reported a net loss of €2.3 billion (from October 2019 to June 2020) as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

TUI's chief executive officer, Fritz Joussen announced that the firm was considering selling the Marella cruise line.

[28][29][30][31] In March 2023, it was announced that TUI would seek to raise $1.8 billion by selling shares at a discount to existing investors, excluding Mordashov as a result of sanctions under German securities law.

[37] In spring 2007, the Norwegian shipowner and financial investor John Fredriksen acquired a 15.01% stake in TUI.