AUSTRIA is making a concerted effort to woo Middle Eastern travellers, especially those from the Gulf states.

Says Austrian Airlines’ regional manager, Gulf, Karim El Sanadily, “We already fly to five points in the Gulf and hope to launch new routes to Jeddah and Bahrain very soon. And by the winter of 2006, we expect to our Dubai-Vienna route, which now flies six times a week, to go daily.”
Saudi Arabia and the UAE  are among the top markets sending tourists to Austria, he says.
The airline’s Holidays arm is also due to repeat a destination-linked promotion with Egypt Air that fetched it additional traffic last year, says El Sanadily.
Austrian recently inaugurated service from Vienna to six East European cities, including Yekaterinburg in Russia, Donetsk in the Ukraine, Iasi and Sibiu in Romania, Pecs in Hungary and Ostrava in the Czech Republic, bringing the airline’s Eastern Europe route network to 44 cities in 23 countries.