East or famine

Eastern Europe may not be in UAE airlines' sights just yet - but that doesn't mean that travel agents can't capitalise on abundant city break, rural retreat and tailor-made opportunities, writes Dominic Ellis.

When anyone tries to define ‘Eastern Europe', it's a bit like pinpointing ‘MENA' or ‘Subcontinent', since there's rarely any consensus where it starts or ends. Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania would be on most people's lists, with Slovakia sandwiched between them, but then it starts to get interesting.

If you skate south through Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Albania, you've almost got one foot in Africa.

Then there's Turkey, a country sucked into ‘Middle East' time and again, but curiously, rarely qualifies as Eastern Europe - although doubtless it will, if EU accession talks prove successful.

Gaze further east, and we find vast Ukraine, smaller Moldovia and emerging Belarus, countries, which historically were not in the picture, but now, following political and cultural changes, lean more towards Europe than Russia.

So it's geographically confusing for starters, which doesn't help agents and operators. The Middle Eastern travel trade is at an additional disadvantage, given the paucity of direct flights, a strange anomaly given the region's vast size and abundance of outbound flights to just about every other European country.

The one exception is Ukraine, which is now definitely on the radar with Ukraine International Airlines reintroducing Dubai-Kiev services and Air Arabia starting services from Sharjah in October.

It's a shame there are not more. With cities steeped in history, stunning scenery and abundance of activities and attractions on offer, coupled with relatively short flight times from the GCC, we're all missing out.

John Flower, product manager at Alpha Holidays Dubai, says Eastern Europe accounts for only a small amount of its total business (3-4%), which he attributes to the lack of direct flights.

"With airlines like Czech Airlines pulling out of Dubai, that just makes the problem worse, but also makes me wonder if there is a plan that Emirates or Etihad will start on these routes," he says.

The potential for travel in Eastern European is massive, he believes. The destination is already a big hit in established markets such as Australia, Europe and the Americas - and that's another reason for optimism, he says, since the Middle East tends to follow trends from these areas.

Flower says city breaks could be promoted to begin with, followed by country retreats as the market becomes established.

"The advice I would offer is to start suggesting it to clients now. We offer a basic Eastern European experience with rail holidays incorporating Hungary and Czech as well as Croatia as a separate package and we plan to develop others in future. The more people talking about it will make the airlines and travellers sit up and listen," he stresses.

He believes Eastern Europe's trump card is that it is still great value for money and as more countries join the EU and take on the Euro, the more expensive and more commercial it will become - obviously with that comes a premium on the price.

"This is a ripe peach in my view - someone just has to pick it," Flower says.

Neither Emirates nor Etihad have sunk their teeth into it yet and Dnata Holidays doesn't feature anything in Eastern Europe. Emirates does serve Russia - a totally different market - and Etihad has tested the water following the launch of the airline's two-a-week services (Tuesdays and Thursdays) between Abu Dhabi and the Belarus capital Minsk in August.

"The airlines aren't silly, there has to be something in it for them commercially, and without decent feeder traffic it will be a difficult call," adds Flower.

"I think that if Emirates or Etihad wanted to test a route, they could incorporate it as a loop service with an established route, provided they have the freedom rights and test it. I think they would be pleasantly surprised."

Wajahat Kazi, sales and station manager for Ukraine International Airlines in Dubai, says: "I think once Emirates has more of its A380s, then they may use our route as feeders for the double-decker aircraft."

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