Emirates Ireland is a real good news story

Anita Thomas, Country Manager Emirates Ireland and Sales Manager for Ireland Filippo Rocchi, welcomed media partners and guests for an afternoon of good news, food and wine in Dublin’s 25 Fitzwilliam place.

Anita made specific reference to the unique relationship that Emirates have built with their media, retail, corporate, wholesale and online partners resulting in a record-breaking year in 2023 for Emirates and already record-breaking start to 2024 both in revenue and load factor terms. In fact, Dublin is one of the top performing departure points globally for Emirates with a double daily service to Dubai and beyond with top destinations for 2024 being Australia, Vietnam, The Indian Ocean, Maldives, South Africa and Bali topping the list of favourites for Emirates passengers from Ireland.

Anita paid tribute to her entire sales team in Ireland as they look set for another record-breaking year.

Anita said:

“With our current new aircraft order and refit program across the fleet we have launched a new recruitment drive for 5,0000 crew worldwide. We have launched a campaign across all cities in Ireland looking for people to join our teams on the ground and in the air representing a huge opportunity to start a wonderful career with Emirates.

Cargo effectively became the beating heart of the airline during the pandemic as we stripped seats out of all our aircraft and literally filled them with a huge amount of cargo including PPE. Today our Cargo element is absolutely thriving, we’ve carried over 140,000 tons of cargo with electronics, pharmaceuticals, dairy foods, Botox and seafood and this just continues to grow. We often have a battle in terms of the aircraft weight because you can carry 25 tons as long as you have some empty seats, but when you heavy loads we need to offset that on leisure flights and this is where the double daily service to Dubai really helps because it allows us to facilitate that movement and connection with the rest of the world. Ireland again punches above its weight in terms of what you experience on board as we have Butler’s chocolates, VOYA products from Sligo, Killowen yogurts as well as Keogh Crisps. Seeing our own home-grown products on flights to Dubai from Ireland is extremely rewarding.

The demographic has changed in relation to the passenger profile flying on our network from Dublin to Dubai and beyond due to the amount of content and product profiling distributed by media partners here today. Dubai was seen as a very high end it was honeymooners along with parents visiting families. Dubai has now become a leading holiday destination with amazing beaches, hotels, resorts with Marina, water parks, attractions and endless restaurants and bars. Dubai are constantly investing delivering in tourism which a lot of you have experienced.

Emirates continues to invest and has a clear vision of where we want to be in five years’ time. We’ve embarked on a 16 aircraft brand new retrofit program including our Airbus A380 double Decker aircraft. Not only are they getting fully refurbished, we are also delivering brand new sweets, full length private suites in first class and we’re introducing a premium economy so there’s a new cabin going in. We have also just signed a $58 billion deal to buy another 110 aircraft so that’s 310 aircraft coming on board, hence our massive recruitment drive in Ireland and across the globe for crew.“

The future of Emirates is most certainly bright and we should all be so proud of Anita and team Emirates in Ireland as it is real travel industry success story.