From Andalusian parents, and educated in Germany, Molina is the chairman of TSS Group, which boasts a successful business model based on innovation and swift responses to changes in the market.
Manuel Molina’s story is worthy of an academic study. His parents, originally from Malaga, wanted their son to be born in the capital of the Costa del Sol even though they had been settled in Germany for some time.
Although his heart was born in Andalucia, he grew up and was educated in Dresden, where he initially started out as a commercial pilot, but after a few ups and downs in life, he found his entrepreneurial calling and founded Germanwings in 1989, which was later acquired by Lufthansa for its low-cost line.
Molina is the chairman of the tour group TSS Group, an organisation with more than 25,000 employees, an annual turnover in the region of 4 billion euros, and close to 3500 travel agencies.
TSS Group started out with 14 small travel agencies, but it was the first in the country to harness the potential of multichannel sales strategies to attract customers in Germany back in 2002. Molina knew how to take advantage of the possibilities that the Internet and call centres had to offer and steered the TSS Group to the forefront of the sector, attracting a huge number of German and Polish tourists to the south of Spain.
In addition to being a pilot, Manuel Molina also holds a degree in Economics and both the universities in Hong Kong and Malaga have awarded him doctor honoris causa degrees. He’s a professor at the university in Dresden and has also created scholarships for tourism students at the universities in Seville and Malaga. He’s also a professor of tourism innovation on a course that bears his name in Malaga and has created a network of multimedia libraries for school children. As you can see, he’s a man firmly committed to the academic world.
And if that wasn’t enough, the Malaga businessman is also the vice-chairman of Amadeus. And was awarded the prestigious Medal of Andalusia by the regional government and named an honorary citizen of Malaga by the city council in 2017.
