Austrian Airlines reveals expansion drive plan

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El Sanadily: Austrian Airlines is looking to expand its Middle East presence.

Austrian Airlines has revealed plans to expand its presence in the Gulf region and improve its business class product on flights serving the Middle East.

"We will be adding more destinations and more frequencies in the Middle East," said Austrian Airlines regional manager Gulf Region & Lebanon Karim El Sanadily. "We are looking at Saudi Arabia in particular as we used to fly to Jeddah and Dammam, and we are definitely improving our business class product next year."

The only barrier to starting up flights to KSA involved travel agent commission issues, El Sanadily revealed.

He was referring to British Airways' decision to go to zero percent in KSA last month, which had put pressure on other European carriers to follow suit.

"When you are online [in a country] it (cutting commission) hurts you, compared to when you are offline," he explained. "But there are many destinations in Saudi Arabia we could fly to - we have done the market research and the results have been very positive."

El Sanadily noted that 25% of Austrian's Middle East passengers ended their trip in Austria, with the remainder flying to one of the carrier's 130 onward destinations.

"We are strong in Eastern Europe in particular," he said.

"We also have a lot of religious traffic from Eastern Europe to Saudi Arabia for Hajj and Umrah," he added.

Austrian Airlines is also preparing to roll out a holiday brochure in the Gulf market in time for next summer.

The move comes as Austria reported a record number of visitors from the Middle East this summer.

Arrivals from the Gulf increased 100% on 2006 figures, with the most popular destinations including Vienna, Zell am See, as well as newcomers Gastein Valley, Kitzbühel and Carinthia, according to the Austrian National Tourist Office.

"The brochure will mainly focus on Austria itself, but also Munich, Prague and surrounding countries," revealed El Sanadily.

Ski and Christmas packages will also feature in the brochure, which El Sanadily said would be officially launched at Arabian Travel Market in May.

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