Emirates Airlines has achieved a 10 percent increase over last year in its sales of special packages for Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF) 2004, which has just ended.
The airline now serves 74 cities in 52 countries on four continents and its promotion of Dubai has gathered pace as the network has expanded. Most of its area and country managers are United Arab Emirates (UAE) nationals.
Recent figures from the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) show that overall hotel guests per annum staying in Dubai have increased two and a half times from 1996 to 2002.
From the start of operations in 1985, Emirates has aggressively promoted Dubai, currently fielding a team of 206 sales executives operating in more than 70 online and offline countries. Each overseas destination is tasked with increasing sales to Dubai by 25 per cent every year.
In many cases, visitor numbers have increased the most from those countries linked to Dubai by the largest number of Emirates flights. Those from the UK, for example, have increased four-fold from 1996 to 2002.
The number of passengers coming into Dubai on Emirates has more than doubled since 1996 when the airline carried 691,705 passengers to its home base. By 2003, the number had risen to 1,515,345. Visitors handled by Arabian Adventures, the airline's destination management company, also more than doubled during the same period. — (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
