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Emirates Holidays expects Dh700m ’07 sales revenue

DUBAI — Emirates Holidays is expecting Dh700 million in sales revenue for this year, a jump of more than 35 per cent over last year's Dh500 million. This was the highest level of sales recorded by the company in its 17 years of operation, and represents a 22-per cent rise from 2005.

Hans Haensel, divisional senior vice-president for Emirates Destination & Leisure Management, yesterday said Emirates Holidays is the largest revenue-generating company in the Emirates Group and continues to be a good business. "We'd put Dubai on the map in the international market," he said in a conference at the 2007 Arabian Travel Market (ATM).

John Felix, vice-president of Emirates Holidays, said the company is confident of meeting its revenue target as it announced this year's new destinations-Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. Also in the pipeline are Seefeld, in Austria; Italy's Verona, via Venice; Nagoya, Japan; and the twin cities of Tunis and Hammamet, in Tunisia.

As the largest tour operator in the Gulf and the Middle East, Emirates Holidays is also set to launch by end-2007 its services in India, particularly Kolkata and Bangalore, and China. Last year it launched services in Hong Kong, the Russian capital of Moscow, and South Africa's Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

It added that 45 per cent of its customers keep on booking Emirates Holidays' tour packages. And from more than 100,000 clients last year, 41 per cent were from the UAE and 28 per cent from the rest of the Middle East. Nine per cent were from Africa, Russia and Australasia were seven per cent each, and eight per cent of clients came from Europe.

In an interview, Felix said the Brazil destinations would pave the way for tour packages to Argentina and Chile, or the rest of South America. He stressed that Brazil is now accessible through Emirates Holidays packages involving a 14-hour flight, or the same travel time to New York or Sydney non-stop.

Hans said last year's top 12 destinations for its clients, the bulk of whom were honeymooners, included the UAE, Malaysia, Thailand, Germany, the UK, Mauritius, Maldives, Egypt, Singapore, France, India and Australia. He added that the clients who chose Asia for their holidays last year went to Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.