With economic growth and a growing number of airlines announcing new routes into the former war-ridden country, travel agencies say they seeing a huge boom in travel to and from Iraq, which they are keen to jump on board.
Sharaf Travel plans to open its first office in Baghdad in July. Managing director of Sharaf Travel, V. Jayaram said: “We are one of the few agencies who are setting up shop there. We see tremendous potential in Iraq.
It’s the right time to move there with the government opening up, and more and more airlines flying into the country such as Emirates, Lufthansa, Austrian, Royal Jordanian, Gulf Air. This says a lot, it means that there is a lot of business there and we want to be there as well.”
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Jayaram said Sharaf Travel would be targeting “corporate houses, government institutions and the armed forces for business”.
“Our strength is that we have our office in Dubai because there is currently a lot of travel between Iraq and Dubai, so that will give us an advantage there.”
Jayaram added that if the Baghdad branch was a success, further expansion across Iraq could be on the cards.
“We could look at Erbil and other cities. That’s on the plan depending on how this goes. We don’t want to jump into anything big. We’ll start with Baghdad and gradually move in.”
Prime Travel opened an office in Camp Victory - the largest military zone in Baghdad last year, and according to manager, Aiden Walsh, the branch is the now the company’s most profitable “Our main audience is the small to medium sized contactors who don’t have the infrastructure to organise their own travel,” said Walsh.
“It’s a very highly charged environment. Contracts are given very quickly and the movement of people can be quite rapid. But we feel we have found a niche in what we do. With all the flights going to Iraq now I think a lot of the mainline corporate travel companies will try to get a foothold in the market because there is huge amounts of business over there,” he added.
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