Emirates wins over Japanese travel trade at JATA

At JATA the airline, which serves Osaka with a daily service, announced the relocation of its existing office in the city to larger, spanking-new premises and the opening of a brand-new offline office in Tokyo. Both offices have been fitted with Emirates' corporate interiors, systems and facilities to enhance customer service and reinforce the airline's branding in the local market.

The expanded new Osaka office has become a one-stop Emirates travel hub with the call centre, which was earlier outsourced, brought in-house and transformed to a sales, reservations and ticketing office, handling a broad range of functions including retail, corporate and travel trade customers.

Emirates' customers in Japan can look forward to more enhanced services as staff numbers have now doubled to more than 30, with the new employees thoroughly trained at the Emirates Aviation College in Dubai, on using the airline's sophisticated systems and in truly representing its high-quality standards.

More than 3,500 visitors and travel trade executives called on Emirates' stand and expressed intense interest in the airline and its products, including group and MICE travel. The travel trade held meetings and engaged in meaningful dialogue with Emirates' senior executives from Dubai and Osaka. Many visitors and the media recounted their delight at finding Japanese crew onboard Emirates' flights and hoped the airline would fly the double-decker Airbus A380, of which it has 45 on order, to Japan.

Richard Vaughan, Emirates' Senior Vice President Commercial East Asia & Australasia, who attended JATA said: 'This is the 13th year of Emirates' participation at JATA and coupled with three years of direct services to Osaka, we have established a strong presence in the country. As one of the biggest events for the travel trade in the Far East, JATA is an ideal regional platform to meet and exchange views, as well as showcase our developments to discerning Japanese customers, partners and major industry players.

'Our brand new offices in Japan and the new ticketing and reservations centres are symbols of Emirates' philosophy to continuously enhance and provide service excellence across all our customer touch points.'

Emirates began services to Osaka on 1st October 2002 with four weekly services to the ultra-modern Kansai International Airport. In March 2004, Emirates increased its services to a daily, and currently operates an Airbus A340-500 which offers 258 seats in a three-class configuration - 12 First, 42 Business and 204 Economy Class seats - and over 100 tonnes of weekly cargo capacity.

Emirates' services to Japan are on the upswing with the airline experiencing strong demand from both passengers and cargo customers. Japan and UAE are mature trading partners with Japanese exports to the UAE growing by 27 per cent to US$4.6 billion and UAE exports rising by more than 28 per cent to US$18.3 billion in 2004.

Japan has emerged as the fastest-growing market for the ultra-luxurious Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa, which has seen the country's guest numbers increase by almost 30 per cent on an average every year since 2001, and is expected to touch an approximate 40 per cent in 2005. Twenty-five per cent of the resort's Japanese guests are repeat customers and an equal per cent of its Guest Relations staff speak Japanese.