84 TRAVEL TRADE NEWS
NI Travel News are proud to announce the supported Charity at the 30th Anniversary NI Travel & Tourism Awards in Association with Blue Insurance is Sands (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support- Northern Ireland Network).
Sands Northern Ireland is a volunteer-led Group that works to support the charity’s vision aims in NI. For more than 40 years, Sands has supported anyone affected by pregnancy and baby loss. Last year, the charity supported over 2 million people and is the leading UK baby charity. The charity exists to provide: • Accredited bereavement support both nationally and locally,
• Support, train and work with the NHS and heath professional and
• Campaign for change and invest into research to save more babies’ lives. Over the past 30 years, The NI Travel Awards have raised over £100,000 for many different charities, and we thank you for your generous support.
TOURS and experiences B2B connectivity platform Globick has published research showing a significant opportunity to cross-sell in-destination experiences to travellers who have already booked a hotel or flight. Globick recently conducted a survey with its partner NTT DATA – part of the global provider of IT and business services NTT Group – of a statistically relevant sample of Spanish travellers based in Madrid and Barcelona.
The survey anlaysed scenarios for a variety of different travel purchasing channels – including having purchased accommodation via a hotel website, a plane ticket via an airline website, a plane ticket an airline app, and a hotel via an OTA – at different stages in the trip experience, including at the time of purchasing the hotel or flight, a few days before arrival in destination, and once in destination.
Regardless of purchasing channel or time to arrival the buying intention of travellers
STOPOVERS, SUSTAINABILITY AND SERVICE: NI TRAVEL NEWS CATCHES UP WITH ETIHAD’S MARTIN DREW
NI Travel News’ Kirsty Johnston caught up with Etihad’s Senior Vice President of cargo and sales Martin Drew as they celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Dublin to Abu Dhabi route...
ABU Dhabi and Dublin have a strong importance to each other- Why is the Dublin route so important to Etihad? We are here at the moment to be celebrating our 15th anniversary of the Dublin route. It started in July 2007 and we were one of the first middle east carriers to operate into Dublin and
Ireland.Ireland always had a close place in our heart and the fact we were one of the first to come here and it has always been an incredibly strong market for us. The links between Ireland and Abu Dhabi, the UAE, are very strong and in terms of Abu Dhabi, there are a huge amount of Irish expats that live in Abu Dhabi, and of course, when we look at the flows that we pick up from Ireland, a lot are coming into the UAE, and of course a lot are going to the kangaroo route, going down to Australia, a huge amount of volume going down there as well as destinations in southeast asia , like thailand, malaysia
etc.The UAE continues to grow in terms of popularity a destination for the Irish.
How do you expect to see destination expansion growing in the future from the Abu Dhabi hub? As we finally start to come out of this pandemic,and we are very much into recovery mode and we see now, in terms of demand, it
with regards to in-destination experiences – when prompted by whoever they had already purchased their hotel or flight with – remained both high and consistent with only limited variation:
Overall 69% of those surveyed showed themselves open to purchasing an in- destination experience via such prompts. Museums would be the top purchase choice, with only 1% of people seeing themselves as ‘highly unlikely’ to purchase such tickets.
Sept/Oct 2022 Travel News NI Travel & Tourism Awards Announce Supporting Charity
Jonathan Adair of NI travel News said “On such a celebratory night it is always important to recognise a local charity and this year we are delighted to contribute to the work done by Sands NI. Ladies and gentlemen, please dig deep and thank you for the support!”. Victoria Luk, Head of Partnership & Philanthropy at Sands said “We are incredibly grateful that you would like to support bereaved families right across Northern Ireland in such an amazing way. What a brilliant opportunity for us to also connect with more people so they’re aware of the services available to them.”.
For support and more information – https://
northernireland.sands.org.uk/ Helpline – 07740 993450 /
https://www.facebook.com/ SANDSNI/
On the night, we will accept cash only donations, collected by the NI Travel News Team. Your donation will put you in for a chance to win a selection of fantastic prizes up for grabs. These will be revealed on night.
Travel Industry Missing Opportunity to Cross-Sell Experiences
Whilst sports events proved the least popular, with 28% being ‘highly unlikely’ to buy. In total 54% of respondents said that they had purchased in-destination experiences via such prompts previously.
Moreover, it showed that more and more travellers are thinking ahead when it comes to in-destination experiences with 53% stating that they regularly buy such services in advance of arriving at the destination.
has taken us all by surprise- how quickly and how aggressively it has come back. We call it revenge travel,whatever you want to call it, but our low factors are truly through the roof and the performance of our Dublin route; Our low factors are sky high. What we’re doing now is going back in to rebuilding the network; The network is already back up to around 90% of the pre-pandemic destinations we were serving, the focus this year is now on wrapping up frequency on those ,on those destinations, for Dublin, we have went back to daily operations- We were 5 a week so now we are back to daily. We now focus on rebuilding the network as we said, we are already sort of a lot of the way there, but those transit flows are always going to be key for us, with super connector as they put it, whilst promoting Abu Dhabi as a destination is a key part of what we do- It is an incredible destination with a huge amount to offer in terms of leisure activities ,the theme parks, the hotels, incredible beaches, various tourism assets. That’s the focus for us this year, the continued focus is how we promote Abu Dhabi as a tourist destination but obviously continue to build the connections as well .but going, for us ,the focus in relation to ireland is how we continue to grow business out of this market, not only for transit business but very much for Abu Dhabi as well.
What does future travel look like to the Middle East as it grows in popularity?
We see a lot of people coming in from
here on vacation, so that is a big thing for us about promoting stopovers. Where we sit geographically ,this is the perfect location to do that when you’re travelling from Europe’s down to Australia, Asia or asia.
Do you see a lot of people returning to the destination?
Very much so. It’s a great way of creating awareness and we have various stopover packages that we offer ,for example , for those travelling in business class that offer a free stopover and then in economy it’s buy one get one free. It’s something that’s really heavily supported by Abu Dhabi DCT, the Department of Culture and Tourism,- the promotion of stopovers. It’s all about creating awareness for Abu Dhabi and the stopovers product is the perfect way of doing that. Can you
elaborate on what
Ireland that actually are staying in the UAE, as a destination, the family destination, Abu Dhabi continues to be voted as the safest city in the world, so they’ve won all sorts of accolades globally, for the way they handled the pandemic. It is an incredibly safe destination, in terms of the quality of hotels ,the various assets that are there and it’s a huge amount to offer for families but also for all sorts of travellers. It is also a great stop over as well ,so when you’re travelling from Ireland down to Australia, it is a fairly long journey, so being able to break that up with one or two nights stay in Abu Dhabi on route is a great thing. By promoting people stopping over in the destination, what that does is creates awareness around Abu Dhabi. What you will find is that people will stop over in Abu Dhabi for a night or two and think ,you know what, I would actually like to come back
packages include? Through our trade partners,
the you’re able
to avail of this offer but also through etihad. com, our direct channel. So basically, premium guests are offered a free stopover ,and then for economy passengers, it is to buy one get one free. We are also going through tactical offerings where we will offer free stopovers for economy passengers at times. Within the price of your flight, you will get one night’s accommodation at a three star or four star hotel.
It’s a great programme and the number of really good hotels that we have access to with this programme is great. What does sustainabilty look like at Etihad and what are the plans for the future?
Sustainability for us is at the very top of our agenda. We have actually just won an award for being the most sustainable airline in the world, so for us, we see ourselves as world leaders in this space. We have various initiatives for example, our core aircraft within the fleet is the 787 aircraft; very efficient aircraft . We also have something called the greenliner- This is a partnership we have with Boeing and with GE and this aircraft is in a special livery and this
aircraft is used.
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