On Tuesday morning, Alberto Kunkel, EVP Tour Operating and Sales & Marketing at LuxairTours, revealed to The Luxembourg Chronicle a number of new destinations the tour operator is considering implementing.
As announced in January, and reinforced at today's Luxair Group press conference in Niederanven, the numbers of passengers flown by LuxairTours to North Africa has reduced from over 90,000 in 2010 to around 27,000 in 2015, and numbers to Egypt have falled from 45,000 to 16,700, both primarily due to terrorism threats and the political instability in those regions.
In addition to a number of new destinations introduced for the Summer 2016 season, including Zadar in Croatia, Chania in Greece, Costa de Almeria in Southern Spain (Andalousia), plus the Italian destinations of Venice and Naples, the tour operator has been flying a small number of flights to Lapland (Rovaniemi in Finland) and Iceland in the winter season, to test the market.
Alberto Kunkel revealed that the tour operator is looking at implementing new routes for the 2017-18 winter season, with disucssions intitally with Turkish Airlines and AirFrance-KLM for code-sharing possibilites to destinations including Cancun in Mexico, as well as the Dominican Republic, and also St Petersburg is Russia. The delay in implementing these routes in time for the 2016-17 winter season is understood to be primarily due to the complexities of the booking system and incorporating the seat and price options offered by the airline - "it is no longer a matter of just buying a block of seats at a single price, it is much more complex than that" stated Alberto Kunkel.
