Emirates committed to A380
AT ITB Aviation Day, Emirates Airlines CEO Tim Clark gave his full support to the Airbus A380 despite the current delay in production.
'It is a problem for our planned growth, but we have already found solutions. We are strongly committed to this aircraft, and it fills a gap in our capacity as it is the only aircraft with a capacity of over 500 seats.” He said the aircraft will be the flagship of its fleet. The airline is the Airbus A380’s largest customer with a total order of almost 200 machines.
Airbus remains very optimistic about the future of the aircraft. “There is a need for 1,664 large aircraft for the next 20 years and most of the future Airbuses will be delivered to Asia,” said an Airbus spokesman.
European outbound travel up 3pc
ACCORDING to IPK International’s World Travel Monitor results for 2006, European outbound travel increased by three per cent last year in terms of trips, to 388 million, and by five per cent in terms of overnight volume, to 3.7 billion, reflecting a slightly longer average length of trip.
The trend can be attributed in some part to the fact that long-haul travel, which generates longer average stays, now seems to have made a strong recovery. Spending on foreign travel was up six per cent to ?351 billion, or approximately ?904 per trip and ?95 per trip.
The most dynamic growth market by a wide margin was Poland, up 17 per cent, followed by Russia and Ireland (both up 10 per cent).
Spain continues to be the favourite destination for Europeans, with 13 per cent of total trips, ahead of France (10 per cent) and Germany (nine per cent).
Algeria to add 20,000 hotel beds
FOLLOWING decades without investment, Algeria’s Ministry of Tourism indicated that there are 300 hotel projects in the pipeline, which would give Algeria an additional 20,000 beds, according to the ITB daily. These projects, most of which should be operating by 2008, are desperately needed, said a tourism spokesman. At present, the country has a total of 1,004 hotels, over 800 of which are not classified. Only ten are classified as five-star.
Algerian group Mehri has formed a partnership with French group Accor to construct 36 hotels, which will see the Ibis brand rolled out across the country.