Over 400,000 expected to travel through Dubai International from today until December 21
After a lull due to the coronavirus pandemic, UAE’s inbound and outbound travel is picking up, with travel agents and Dubai’s major airliner seeing a spike in travel bookings for the month of December.
Emirates said on Tuesday that approximately half a million passengers are now booked for flights starting today until December 21.
During the period, more than 200,000 of these flyers will be travelling through Terminal 3 of Dubai International, as UAE residents and citizens head back home or abroad. In addition, more than 200,000 flyers are also scheduled to arrive into Dubai on Emirates flights during the same period.
“The busiest day for the airline will be on Friday (December 11), although high passenger traffic is expected to start today, and will run through (December 21),” the airline said.
Global air travel has been hugely depressed since March, with holidaymakers and business travellers putting off overseas trips due to the coronavirus pandemic. The huge slump in passenger numbers has caused airlines to lose billions of US dollars in revenues.
Positive shift
According to Travel Counsellors UAE, a travel agency, there has indeed been a spike in bookings from customers looking to fly overseas this month.
Its agents reported more new bookings made throughout November, with sales climbing to 114 percent of the figures registered during the same period last year.
“The spike in sales is driven by [customers’] pent-up demand,” said Holly McCann, general manager of Travel Counsellors.
“Our top selling destination in November was the Maldives and the vast majority of those bookings are travelling within the next four weeks. This, along with the continued trend towards residents enjoying staycations in the country means that we have seen our trading here very quickly bounce back to pre-COVID levels,” said Holly McCann, general manager of Travel Counsellors.
It remains unclear whether the recent spike in travel bookings is only seasonal. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said recently that the coronavirus pandemic continues to have devastating impact on the air travel industry, with “deep” losses expected to continue into 2021.
It said there will be an improvement in traffic in the coming year, with passenger numbers expected to grow to 2.8 billion in 2021, but the figures will still be short of 2019 performance.
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