Emirates Holidays eyes growing African business from India

New Delhi, June 7 (IANS) Emirates Holidays, the holiday packages arm of Emirates Airlines, Thursday said it has a bullish outlook on its business in Africa from India.

"We expect the whole of Africa region has a significant potential to grow tourism opportunities from India," Nadeem Ulde, Emirates Holidays' business development manager for India, told IANS.

"Countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia are major attractions that we are looking at growing significantly through our packages. We will soon start a special campaign to promote travel to regions such as South Africa," he said.

Ulde was speaking at the launch of the company's expanded travel brochure with eight new destinations that can be reached from India.

These destinations are Lusaka, Harare, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Dublin, Dallas, Seattle and Vancouver.

"We cater to the high-end segment of customers who have already been to many popular international destinations and are now looking for offbeat places like Africa," he said.

"We expect a good response to destinations such as Lusaka and Harare as a lot of Indians would like to visit these places which were earlier thought to be a tough travel ask for them."

The company said it had a bullish outlook on its business in India, saying it expected double digit growth in the current fiscal.

"We have been witnessing strong growth in India ever since we started operations here in 2006. This fiscal, we expect a double digit growth as more and more Indians want to experience new destination with quality travel assistance."

Currently, the parent airline, through which the company operates its packages, operates 185 weekly flights from 10 Indian destinations to its hub in Dubai, from where transit flights transport passengers to their holiday destinations.