Emirates, the world’s largest international airline, has reported that the strong demand for travel in the past few months has led to one of its busiest summers ever.
Between June and August of 2023 Emirates carried over 14 million passengers to and from 140 different cities on nearly 50,000 flights.
New destinations for the summer include 12 cities: Athens, Brisbane, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam, Budapest, Bologna, Medina, Jeddah, Entebbe, Venice and Shanghai. This is in addition to a new year round schedule offering of Montreal, Canada.
Destination Dubai
Although Emirates customers enjoy the Dubai hub for it’s International transfers, there’s a lot of demand for “Destination Dubai” as more than just a fleeting transit.
Over two million customers staying an average of over two weeks, and 35% of those being families are a clear signal that continued investment and year round attractions are still holding their value in bringing people to Dubai for more than just business.
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Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ Chief Commercial Officer said: “Travel demand across our network has been strong and resilient despite rising cost-of-living pressures in many markets.”
“It shows the value that people place on travel – whether for work, play, study, or visiting loved ones; and how essential international air connectivity is to communities.”
Emirates summer fleet and destination options
While other airlines have been slowly moving their fleets back into full utilisation post-pandemic, Emirates have been quick to make the most of its A380’s in particular.
Emirate’s latest 4-class variants are now offering Premium Economy on some of the most popular routes to Singapore, Los Angeles and Houston.
Reintroduction of the A380 daily services to Birmingham, Nice, Taipei and Shanghai as well as offering the first of it’s kind A380 service into Indonesia with announcement of a new schedule into Bali
Adnan Kazim added: “As an early mover in restoring our flying schedules, Emirates worked closely with our industry partners to ensure our readiness to serve customer demand as well as attract visitors through building on the appeal of our home and hub, Dubai.
We’re happy to see strong customer preference for our product in all cabin classes, especially in our premium cabins. Emirates will continue to ensure we are delivering the best value for money to our customers, by investing in our products, services, and in operating an efficient global network.”
Partnership expansions
To this end Emirates now has 157 airline and rail partners, allowing it to extend it’s reach to over 100 countries and 800 destinations, something it claims has been key to the continued interest from customers.
Expanded codeshare arrangements with Kenya Airways, Air Canada and Philippine Airways are some of the latest aspects of this introduced for the summer schedules onwards.
Looking to Winter
Emirates strong summer is also allowing them to anticipate the good news will continue throughout the rest of this year and into next with a predicted spike in demand heading into the winter season thanks to Dubai’s popularity.
The city is offering an extensive schedule of not just the usual global conferences but also sporting events. With the amount of people heading into Dubai up by over a million in the first 6 months of 2023, on the same period for 2022.
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