Emirates Holidays seeks to lure 25% more customers this year

Dubai: Emirates is pushing into new territory to meet an ambitious target for its holidays division in 2007.

Emirates Holidays is expanding its on-the-ground presence in Russia, China, India and South Africa in order to bring in 25 per cent more customers this year.

After seeing a jump in Emirates customers purchasing holidays packages by 12 per cent, Hans Haensel, senior vice-president of destination of leisure management division, said the growth could have been much higher.

"We would have liked more than 12 per cent more passengers in 2006," Haensel said during a news conference in Dubai yesterday.

The holidays division has had to deal with high seat factors, or full planes, on Emirates flights that have made it challenging to accommodate its customers. "We have not been able to satisfy demand," he summed up.

To encourage more holiday bookings, Emirates is going abroad, setting up office and hiring specialists to tout its holiday packages in emerging markets.

Last year, the Dubai company selected specialist travel agents in Cape Town, Durban, and Mos-cow to serve as their sole representatives in Russia and South Africa.

This year, Emirates will hire place specialists in India throughout the eight destinations it flies to drum up further business.

And after beginning service to Beijing and Shanghai recently, Emirates will also invest in holidays agents in the country, which Haensel said has great potential and a relatively uncrowded field of competitors.

"With India and China, kicking in, we are getting better known," he said.

Emirates Holidays will also benefit from added capacity in the form of new planes arriving at the rate of around one per month, as well as four new routes this year.

The moves follow a continuing trend in Emirates Holidays decreasing its reliance on UAE residents travelling abroad. When the division first started, 100 per cent of its customers were from the UAE, but that has since been diminished to 41 per cent today.

An additional, 28 per cent of its customers originate from the Middle East, nine per cent are from Africa, eight per cent come from Europe, seven per cent are from Australia & Asia, and the remaining seven per cent come from other regions.

New territory: Hiring specialists to drum up further business