Several travel and tourism offices in Kuwait agree that the number of Kuwaiti tourists visiting Dubai during the holidays in the last four seasons has been the highest so far, reports Al-Jaridah daily. Mohammad Al-Tasabaji, the General Manager of a travel agency, revealed that many airlines have increased the number of flights to Dubai due to a large number of travelers from Kuwait who choose Dubai as […]
Passenger flows through Dubai’s main airport, the world’s second busiest for international traffic, jumped 15.2 percent in 2013 thanks to expansion of its route network and the use of wide-body planes, airport authorities said on Wednesday. Passenger traffic last year totalled a record 66.4 million people. In December, more than 6 million passengers passed though the airport for the first time, an increase of 13.6 percent from […]
Dubai’s flagship airline Emirates is expected to move all of its operations to the emirate’s new Al Maktoum International Airport after 2020, a senior executive at Al Maktoum said on Tuesday. Big international carriers, including Emirates, have so far not indicated any plans to move to the new airport, which officially launched passenger services in October last year. “Emirates have to move to the new airport at […]
Gold’s biggest slump in three decades has been a boon for MKS (Switzerland) SA’s PAMP refinery near the Italian border in Castel San Pietro, whose bullion sales to China surged to a record as demand rose for coins, bars and jewelry. As prices plunged 28 percent in 2013, investors dumped a record 869.1 metric tons from gold-backed funds traded mostly in the U.S. and Europe. Much of […]
DAVOS: Dubai retailer Majid Al Futtaim, which holds the Carrefour franchise in the Middle East, plans to invest about $2.3 billion in Egypt in the next few years, its chief executive said on Wednesday, a sign of Gulf investors’ growing interest in the Egyptian economy. “Total investments on the plan, including Carrefour, should be around 16 billion Egyptian pounds over the next four to five years,” Iyad […]
Dubai’s office spaces are witnessing an “uptick in activity” in the wake of the city’s winning Expo 2020 bid, with growing demand in Business Bay and Jebel Ali. According to Property Finder Group, job creation between 2013 and 2021 is estimated at over 277,000 and a number of major international corporates and start-ups are expected to establish their offices in Dubai in the years leading up to […]
India will seek the cabinet’s approval by next month to scrap a rule that requires local carriers to be in operation for at least five years and have 20 aircraft to be eligible to fly international routes, the aviation minister said. The ministry is also looking into a proposal to allow Airbus’s A380 planes to land in local airports, Ajit Singh said on Tuesday.
The arrest this week of Ralph Lauren’s niece Jennifer for pushing a Delta Air Lines Inc. crew member is the latest example of spiraling inflight misbehavior that industry body IATA says poses a growing threat to safety. The 41-year-old was convicted Jan. 8 of drunkenness and threatening, abusive or insulting behavior aboard an aircraft that had forced her Delta flight bound for New York from Barcelona to […]
Indian budget airline SpiceJet has agreed to buy about 40 Boeing 737 jets worth over $4 billion at list prices, industry sources said, a move that could help the loss-making carrier as it seeks new investors. The deal includes a firm order for as many as 42 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft that offer fuel savings compared to SpiceJet’s existing fleet of current-generation Boeing 737s, the sources said. […]
Passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport rose 9.5 percent from a year earlier in November to 5.3 million people, airport authorities said on Monday. Western Europe recorded the largest increase in total passenger numbers in November, followed by the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Australasia and Africa, Dubai Airports said in a statement. Year-to-date passengers totalled 60.4 million people, an increase of 15.3 percent. Cargo volumes rose […]
Luxury brands are stepping up the battle for travelling shoppers with more outlets at airports and on cruise ships, tapping into one of the fastest growing sections of the market that looks set to keep booming thanks to soaring numbers of Asian tourists. Revenues from travel retail, which also includes sales on airplanes, rose 9.4 percent in 2012 to $55.8 billion, according to a market study by […]
Non-resident Indians are bringing gold into the country by taking advantage of rules that allow each individual to carry 1 kg of the metal, helping traders cope with restrictions on imports during the peak wedding season. India, vying with China to be the top buyer of gold, has choked imports to narrow its trade gap and curb the outflow of dollars. The measures included raising the import […]
Commercial Bank of Qatar is open to tie-ups with local financial institutions and could sell bonds next year to fund infrastructure lending in the Gulf Arab state, its recently appointed chief executive was quoted as saying. The lender, which earlier this year completed the purchase of a 74.2 percent stake in Turkey’s Alternatifbank, is also open to further foreign acquisitions but will wait to see the performance […]
The UAE will add 29.2 million passengers over the next four years at a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 6.6 per cent as total global air passenger numbers are expected to rise to 3.91 billion by 2017, the International Air Transport Association, or Iata, said on Tuesday. As airlines across the globe expect to see a 31 per cent increase in passenger numbers between 2012 […]
A bipartisan budget deal announced in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, though modest in its spending cuts, would end three years of impasse and fiscal instability in Washington that culminated in October with a partial government shutdown. While praised by the Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the agreement faces a challenge from some House conservatives […]
With the D-day approaching fast for the award of the 2020 Expo, everyone in Dubai is excited about a most likely successful Dubai bid. Amidst all the fanfare, however, there is a lurking fear about the impact of a successful bid on the emirate’s real estate sector. Those who do worry have one overriding concern: that Expo fever will tip an already overheating property market into bubble […]
The 2013 Dubai Airshow is expected to be one of the most popular in the show’s history, with more than 1,000 exhibitors and 60,000 visitors already registered.The five-day show, which kicks off November 17 this year, will be held for the first time at the city’s new $32 million Al-Maktoum International Airport — set to be the world’s largest on its 2027 completion. “The days where air […]
Passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, rose 13.1 percent from a year earlier in September to 5.4 million people, airport authorities said on Tuesday. The September clip is well down from August, when passenger numbers jumped 23.8 percent to a record 6.0 million, partly because of travel related to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In the first nine months of this […]
An international meeting in Paris next month may trigger billions of dollars of fresh investment in Dubai – and, if plans are not handled carefully, contribute to the kind of boom-and-bust cycle which nearly bankrupted the emirate four years ago. Dubai is competing with Izmir in Turkey, Sao Paulo in Brazil and Yekaterinburg in Russia for the right to host the 2020 World Expo. A vote of […]
Dubai International Financial Centre is relying on economic growth prospects in Africa and South Asia as it adds buildings with a value of 15 billion dirhams ($4.1 billion) over a decade. DIFC, whose clients include global banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), is seeing a surge in demand from Asian companies and from clients who are using Dubai as a platform to expand into Africa, […]
Dubai International airport, which is being expanded to handle 90 million passengers a year, could be shut to boost traffic at a new super-hub under construction in the sheikdom with as much as twice that capacity. Dubai Airports won’t retain the existing base if owning two hubs hampers the take up of flights at its new Al Maktoum site, and could find “alternative purposes” for the prime […]
The hospital sector is capable of yielding four times of the revenue generated by the hotel industry for the same amount of investment, a leading hospital management expert told the Hotel Show Dubai 2013 at the Dubai World Trade Centre on Sunday. The cost of putting up a hospital bed is almost the same as the cost of creating a room in a five-star hotel, but there […]
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose public support after a trip to the U.S. outweighed the detractors that tried to pelt his convoy with eggs, also has backing from the one who matters most: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After returning from a trip to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, dozens of people tried to block Rouhani’s way, chanting anti-U.S. slogans. The demonstrators were […]
A major independent global study released today calls on airlines to take a fresh look at handling flight delays and cancellations in order to drive loyalty and minimize impact on customers in the short- and long-term. Titled ‘Passengers First: Re-thinking Irregular Operations’, the study is authored by Norm Rose of travel industry research authority PhoCusWright and commissioned by Amadeus, a leading technology partner for the global travel […]
