You might think an airline with its name emblazoned across Arsenal Football Club’s ground has little to worry about regarding its public
profile. But Conrad Clifford, Emirates UK vice-president, believes the airline is not well known enough, and has signed up ad agency VCCP to boost its UK profile.

Playful campaign
VCCP was behind the successful meerkat advert for comparethemarket.com, which has 500,000 Facebook fans and 30,000 followers on Twitter.
Clifford says Emirates could plump for something equally playful that emphasises the quality of the airline’s service.

“I think the product message is not strong enough and I would like to see it strengthened.

“We have got an absolutely fantastic service and I’m not sure that people are aware of it. People should be talking about us and I don’t know that they are,” he says.

“We are making no cuts at all when other airlines are and we need to get that across to agents and the public in general.”

Clifford joined Emirates from Virgin Nigeria in September, taking over from Vic Sheppard, who retired after 13 years.

Apart from the need to beef up marketing, Clifford says there will no major change in Emirate’s UK business and trade terms of 5% basic
commission rate plus a range of net fares.

Revenue growth
Sales in the UK market have been difficult, Clifford admits, but there are no plans to follow British Airways by charging for allocated
seating to increase revenue.

The service on Emirates’ Manchester routes could change however, Clifford revealed, with the addition of a first-class cabin for top end business traffic, including premiership footballers, planned for as early as next year.

Heathrow is also set to see a dedicated security channel for business and first-class passengers, similar to that offered by Virgin Atlantic.

Sales at Heathrow were healthy because of Emirates’ A380 superjumbos, meaning people picked the airport over others, said Clifford.

But the attractiveness of the A380 has to be weighed against security delays which Emirates hopes to bypass with the dedicated channel.

It has opened talks with BAA but Clifford said it could be three years before it is in place.

Outside London, the airline still needed to develop the market at Newcastle. One issue was connection times at Dubai for the daily Newcastle flight.

Birmingham had been suffering as the recession in the Indian sub-continent had hit friends and relatives traffic.

But by the end of January, Birmingham will have a full Emirates lounge on the same scale as one just opened at Manchester, which Clifford hopes will give an edge over competitors.

Managing capacity
The front and back ends of Emirates’ aircraft cabin have been hit by the recession in the UK, and Clifford says the late booking trend has made 2009 even more problematic.

“The business market is down significantly. Leisure is down less than business so is not so bad. The real issue is that even for long-haul people seem to be making decisions as little as 10 days in advance – that’s incredible.

“We think everything is empty and then suddenly all these people come in. That does not make it easy to plan capacity.”

Emirates is planning for extra capacity in Africa after starting a Dubai-Durban service in October, joining its Capetown and Johannesburg routes.

The route completes the triangle of South African destinations used by tourists who like to fly into one airport and out from another.

It also aims to pick up customers travelling to the 2010 World Cup and its sister company Emirates Tours UK is offering World Cup packages.

• Emirates doubles commission on new route (14 Oct 2009)
• Emirates to open Birmingham premium lounge (10 Sep 2009)
• Emirates appoints new UK vice-president (23 Jul 2009)