New strategies at ATM
Turkish Airlines has been expanding its route network targeting new destinations. Chief Marketing Officer, Turkish Airlines, shares the company’s plans for this year’s Arabian Travel Market.
Q Could you share the growth strategy employed by Turkish Airlines during the past year?
Turkish Airlines has been continuously adding new flights and increasing its passenger capacity to meet the increasing customer demands in all of its markets. The GCC market has been one of the key markets for the airlines and has experienced a healthy growth each year. As a network carrier, our strategy for extending our network is based on having more planes so that we can fly more passengers and also target new destinations, both short and long haul.
We will have 339 aircraft at the end of 2016 and 442 aircraft at the end of 2021. Our fleet consists of wide and narrow body aircrafts (passenger and cargo) from both Airbus and Boeing. Such a delivery schedule is crucial for the wide expansion of flights and services all across the world.
Q How has this impacted the general tourism sector in Turkey?
Turkish Airlines flies to more countries and more international destinations than any other airline today. The addition of new flights definitely has a positive impact on the general tourism sector in Turkey, and Istanbul especially, which is strategically located at the crossroads of the East and West. At Turkish Airlines we like to embody real Turkish hospitality and our goal is to welcome tourists from all over the world.
More importantly, as the flag-carrier of the country, our expansion strategy is in line with Turkey’s goals of bringing in more foreign investment and interest in the country through our convenient flights and top of the line services.
Q Explain the growth of the fleet and new destinations added recently.
We have reached a total number of 305 planes in our fleet, flying to 285 destinations across 113 countries worldwide with 236 international and 49 domestic targeting all the regions worldwide.We just included a new flight to IvanoFrankivsk in Ukraine; and we will commence our scheduled flights to Bogota, Panama; Dubrovnik, Atlanta and Hanoi very soon.
Q What are your expectations from Arabian Travel Market (ATM) this year?
Our main aim is to enhance the awareness and perception of the Turkish Airlines brand with our target audience and make new connections by meeting mem- bers of the travel trade with whom we could potentially have future partnerships. The event is always the perfect platform for us to highlight our newest features, ranging from our catering to our exclusive drive service, and our worldclass products.
We will have some exciting European football-related announcements at a later point in time. One of our aims of this year’s event is increase awareness about the official airline partnership with the biggest Hollywood blockbuster of the year, Batman vs Superman: The Dawn of Justice which was recently launched in all movie theatres around the world. Another key highlight for us this year will be the “Aviation Trends” announcement at ATM and in which our spokespeople will discuss all the major trends in the aviation industry.
We will also offer visitors the opportunity to enter a lucky draw to win air tickets to the destination of their choice, which should also provide a great deal of fun and entertainment for our visitors.
Q Could you share the total business transacted last year and the expected business this year at ATM?
The outcome from our participation last year was really good and we expect to achieve similar results, if not better, this year as well.
This will be our sixth year in a row at ATM and the event is continuously growing in the region. It is particularly significant to us because it groups together all our key target markets; so we know that we will be in contact with the right people throughout the days of the exhibition.
We have reached a total number of 305 planes in our fleet, flying to 285 destinations across 113 countries worldwide with 236 international and 49 domestic targeting all the regions worldwide ATM is always the perfect platform for us to highlight our newest features, ranging from catering to exclusive drive service, and worldclass products