FIRST BEIJING, THEN EUROPE
23 June 2008
Roeland van den Bergh
Air New Zealand is planning a new Asia-Europe link service to capitalise on the burgeoning Chinese travel market, which could help bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the tourism economy.
Ed Sims, the airline's head of international business, said it was likely that the direct service to Beijing starting next month would serve as a launching point to increasingly lucrative European destinations.
Air New Zealand canned its unprofitable four-weekly Frankfurt service in 2000, but a growing higher-value market, particularly France and Spain, combined with the arrival of more fuel-efficient aircraft could make European routes viable, Mr Sims said.
Historically the continental European market had been less valuable than the British market for New Zealand tourism, with the exception of German visitors who stayed longer, Mr Sims said.
Beijing was favoured as a stop-off point because Air New Zealand believed that by 2015 China would be New Zealand's third largest tourism market, surpassing the 230,000 visitors from the United States. That compared with 300,000 British tourists a year.
"The incremental value [to New Zealand tourism] would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars," Mr Sims said.
Beijing is also a high-volume market, boasting a new terminal opened in time for the Olympics, and transit lounges not available at Shanghai, Air New Zealand's other Chinese destination.
The Chinese capital also had significant European expat traffic and governmental and ambassadorial business. "It certainly offers more potential in the medium to longer term to grow than Shanghai," Mr Sims said.
Adding one-stop services over Asia to European cities would also cut out the increasingly unpopular Heathrow stopover for passengers heading for continental destinations, and reduce the risk of a single European gateway.
"We are acutely aware of a degree of passenger resistance at Heathrow," Mr Sims said.
There would come a time when passengers would start to fly direct with competitors in order to bypass Heathrow, he said. "I would far rather look at alternatives before we feel that we have to, to protect our customer base."
But Air New Zealand would not give up its valuable landing slots at the Heathrow.
A return to Frankfurt appeared unlikely, with that airport rapidly facing the same issues of congestion and costs as Heathrow.
Mr Sims said that brought Munich and other European cities into consideration.
The European network expansion was not expected before the arrival of long-range Boeing 777-300s from 2010 and the new-generation Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner in 2012.
But plans could be brought forward at the expense of less profitable services if the route proved as financially attractive as early analysis indicated, Mr Sims said.
Record fuel costs and falling demand has forced airlines worldwide to abandon routes and ground aircraft, but a clearer picture of how the aviation industry has survived the crisis was still months off. "There will be potential to quite dramatically reshape the current network map of the world," Mr Sims said.
© 2008 Fairfax New Zealand Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Dominion Post
Go to top
Print Page
Smaller
