Expanding East
Wizz Air recently opened new bases in Lithuania and Serbia. Mark Smullian fi nds out what’s behind these moves and where Wizz would like to expand to next.
E
astern Europe remains a large, under-exploited market for air travel, and Wizz Air is trying to position itself to be ready, as the region’s
economies grow, for their inhabitants to develop a taste for low-cost air travel on the same scale as their western neighbours. The Hungary-based airline’s latest expansion saw it open bases in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Belgrade, Serbia this April. Last year, Wizz Air carried 9.75 million passengers from 14 bases in eight countries, who fl ew aboard 34 A320s on 180 routes to 21 countries, served by 1,300 staff.
As a privately owned company, Wizz Air is not required by the Hungarian authorities to publish any fi nancial information, but insists it had a good year and expects even better in the coming months. Attila Dankovics, the airline’s head of marketing, sales and communications, says: “We are very happy with 99% of our routes and with having 84% load factors. We are the largest low-cost carrier in Eastern Europe and will soon have 200 routes covering it east to west, and south to north.”
Head of network development, Stijn
Vandermoere, sets out the overall future strategy: “Wizz Air is constantly on the lookout for new market opportunities.
www.routesonline.com
We have a leading position in Central and Eastern Europe – the highest growth market of Europe – and our aviation professionals have expert knowledge about new and existing markets, with a focus on developing with our airport partners.” Vandermoere says Wizz Air is evaluating new airports “that provide convenient access to attractive catchment areas and offer facilities that allow effi cient operations as well as low costs”.
Vilnius and Belgrade Two examples of that are Vilnius and Belgrade, each being new bases where “we saw opportunities in both because some other carriers’ offers were not attractive and we felt we could offer superior value products in modern aircraft,” he says. The Baltic state has migrant workers and also attracts tourists for city breaks. The Vilnius routes will be to London Luton, Doncaster/Sheffi eld, Cork, Eindhoven, Stockholm Skavsta, Milan Bergamo, Rome Fiumicino and Barcelona. Belgrade fl ights are expected to rely more heavily on Serbian migrant workers and will serve Rome Fiumicino, Malmö, Stockholm Skavsta, Eindhoven and Munich Memmingen, supplementing existing services to London Luton and Dortmund.
“Vilnius is more for tourists, but both have signifi cant underlying demand,” Dankovics explains.
“Generally there is a consumer appetite for low-cost fl ights. If you look at Central and Eastern Europe, fl ying is under-developed compared with Western Europe, but people are starting to see that air is an affordable option for travellers.” This works in both directions. “People are used to visiting Western Europe’s capital cities, but in Central and Eastern Europe there are great city break destinations too, so we hope to attract people to fl y east to those,” he says.
Opportunities in the east Speaking of the east, Wizz Air would certainly like to fl y to Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, but is thwarted by regulatory hurdles, except in Ukraine. “The regulatory laws are strong and not encouraging, so it would be very diffi cult,” says Dankovics. “It is a pity, as if it were liberalised there would be many people wanting to travel and it would boost their economies but in general those countries are diffi cult.”
Wizz Air considered dipping its toe into Georgia last year but dropped the idea because of the destination’s highly seasonal demand.
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