Face to Face: Laurie Berryman, Emirates
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Emirates is one of those airlines that has a new announcement each week. Whether it’s a new route; onboard innovation or record-beating numbers, it is not uncommon to see the Dubai-based carrier at the forefront of aviation initiatives. Travel Daily speaks to Laurie Berryman, vice president UK at Emirates on what is now new at the carrier.
How is Emirates currently performing in the UK?
Our UK performance in July was a record breaking month; we had almost 200,000 passengers take off on our 16 daily flights from the UK.
Three of our airports had their best months; Glasgow, Heathrow and Gatwick. Heathrow has performed really well with the five Airbus A380 flights a day, which we are filling. The A380 is an amazing magnet – our customers love that the premium area is upstairs and the stand-up bar is popular too.
Do you have any plans to expand your regional flights?
Not currently, although we are always looking for new opportunities.
One such opportunity is to operate our second A380 service from Manchester as demand is strong. The evening Boeing 777 flight will be given to an A380 from 21 September to 30 September.
How are forward bookings faring?
There is strong demand and looking forward we can say for the first time that there is confidence and strength in the economy and people are booking ahead. Sales of October half term, Christmas and February half term are looking busy as there is more confidence.
Those dates also suggest Dubai is now a popular family destination?
Dubai is very much a family destination now and ideal to escape the UK weather in the winter months. All the hotels are very popular and there are ambitious targets to increase the amount of tourists going to the emirate.
Your partnership with Qantas has extended your reach in Australia, how important is this?
The Qantas partnership is key to help us have more flights in Australia and New Zealand. The fact there is more connections and Australia and vice versa means there is more of a feed and we can start that from our regional UK flights. It is absolutely vital to have those domestic connections from our five gateways in Australia that go onto other destinations.
We now have full regulatory approval from the Australian and New Zealand governments and are looking to develop more stopovers to Australia from the current availability in Dubai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. These options will grow and we are excited to see what the next stages will be.
What recent network news is there for Emirates?
We announced a new route earlier this month to Sialkot in Pakistan. This is expected to be popular with British Pakistanis heading home to see family and friends and will start in November.
Our biggest new route on the horizon is to Clark in the Philippines from October. I expect this would be popular with Brits; the Philippines is a sleeping giant when it comes to tourism but there is a huge opportunity and also for the Philippines market to visit the UK.
In Europe we added a second daily service from Amsterdam and beefed up some other routes, while our Milan to New York launch is interesting for us.
What main challenges does Emirates face?
Economic activity around the world and oil prices creeping up are the main challenges for us. The weakness and strength of currencies also has an impact as it changes fuel costs.
Currently during the summer our premium cabins are quieter as it is not the corporate time to travel, but autumn bookings are strong for the business market. We hope these good numbers will drive the years going forward.
Is there any other news you’d like to share?
We are continuing to develop our frequent flyer programme for our loyal passengers. These users can now burn their miles on easyJet flights and it has been really popular. As a lot of our frequent flyers travel to Dubai all the time for business, they like to use their points to take shorter breaks in Europe during their holidays. We will continue to respond to customer feedback.
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