Summer highs and lows for Emirates Holidays

The summer season produced a mixed bag of results for Emirates Holidays, which like all other businesses, was impacted by the triple whammy effect of Swine Flu fears, global recession and an early Ramadan.

Senior vice president John Felix said the good news was that for many destinations, the total number of room nights for many destinations had increased compared to last summer.

“People were staying longer and we had a better quality of bookings coming through,” he told ATN.

In terms of room nights booked with Emirates Holidays, Thailand was up 10% year on year; Singapore 25%; Lebanon 25%; and Mauritius 5%.

Switzerland and Austria also “performed well”, however, traditionally popular destinations such as London, Paris, Kuala Lumpur and the Gold Coast, Australia, were down year on year in terms of room nights. In fact, Malaysia was down 3%.

Felix said that due to Swine Flu concerns and summer being cut short, there was pent-up demand that he believed would drive stronger sales from Eid until the end of the year.

“From our indications we think we have hit the bottom and we are on the upswing,” he said.

Felix noted that holidays to Durban would come online when Emirates Airline started its daily Dubai-Durban service on October 1, plus he reminded agents that Emirates Holidays’ ski brochure would be on the shelves no later than early November.