Air Arabia has won a prestigious World Travel Market 2015 World Travel Leaders Award in recognition of its route innovation and adherence to the Low-cost carrier (LCC) model.
The airline received the coveted award today (Tuesday 3 November) at the WTM World Travel Leaders Award ceremony. The award was presented by TTN Middle East publishing director, Kim Thomson and was collected by Air Arabia, head of commercial, A.K Nizar.
The Awards give WTM London’s Official Media Partners – which represent key travel industry media around the world – an excellent platform to congratulate and recognise those companies and individuals which have made the greatest contributions to travel and tourism in their region or sector.
Three nominations from each of WTM London’s media partners were judged in September by a panel of three, made up of an independent body, a representative of WTM and the relevant media partner.
Air Arabia has recently increased its global network which now provides travel to 104 destinations worldwide. It has achieved this by opening a new international hub in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, in 2014 which was followed by another hub in Amman, Jordan in May 2015. The hub in Amman gives passengers access to Kuwait, Jeddah, Erbil and Sharm El Sheikh.
Earlier in the year, Air Arabia became the first LCC from the Middle East and Africa to enter the Chinese market with the launch of services to Urumqi, the largest city in Western China. The carrier also added Isfahan and Sanandaj in Iran and Gizan in Saudi Arabia in the first quarter of the year, as well as increasing the frequency of services on a number of existing routes.
This expansion has seen the airline post a net profit of US$154 million in 2014, up 30 per cent compared to the same period last year. Air Arabia’s growth will also benefit the destinations that have been added to its network greatly thanks to increased connectivity to the UAE and the larger GCC and Middle East, increasing trade and tourism revenues. This will also result in the creation of skilled jobs in the fast-growing aviation sector across all of the connection dots.
The judges at the WTM World Travel Leaders Awards felt that Air Arabia deserved its award due to being an industry leading airline.
“The first to break the mould and even today still leads with route innovation and adherence to the LCC model,” the judges said.
Every year, World Travel Leaders Awards are presented at WTM London. The full list of 2015 winners is:
Canada: WestJet
Spain: Loro Parque Fundacion
Italy: Trenitalia
Brazil: Mr. Eloi D’Avila De Oliveira – Founder of Flytour group
Portugal: Vila Gale Hotels
Russia: Bronevik.com
India: roomsXML Solutions Limited
China: World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF)
Travolution: Gareth Williams
USA: Arthur Frommer
TTG: G Adventures
Middle East: Air Arabia
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About World Travel Market London
WTM London, the leading global event for the travel industry, is the must-attend four-day business-to-business exhibition for the worldwide travel and tourism industry.
Almost 51,500 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and international press, embark on ExCeL – London every November to network, negotiate and discover the latest industry opinion and trends at WTM.
WTM London, now in its 36th year, is the event where the travel industry conducts and concludes its deals. WTM 2014 will generate around £2.5 billion of travel industry contracts.
WTM London is part of Reed Travel Exhibition’s World Travel Market events, which also includes Arabian Travel Market, World Travel Market Latin America and World Travel Market Africa. www.wtmworld.com
World Travel Market Events
World Travel Market is comprised of the leading leisure travel events in the world; World Travel Market London, WTM Latin America in Sao Paulo, WTM Africa in Cape Town and Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.
New events for 2016 are WTM connect Asia and WTM connect China, which join WTM connect Ski and International Golf Travel Market. These unique one-to-one events are targeted at leisure and niche travel markets, allowing exhibitors to exclusively meet with elite hosted buyers.
The World Travel Market events are attended by the global travel and tourism industry’s senior executives to conduct business deals and discover the latest research, insight and opinion.
In 2014, the World Travel Market events facilitated around $7 billion in industry deals from negotiations between the more than 15,000 buyers, 9,500 exhibitors (1,500 main stand holders and 8,000 stand sharers) in attendance of its four events.
WTM is part of Reed travel Exhibitions, the leading events organiser in the travel industry, and is owned by the world’s leading events organiser Reed Exhibitions.
Reed Travel Exhibitions
Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) is the world’s leading provider of exhibitions in the travel and tourism industry. Its wide-ranging portfolio of events around the globe covers leisure travel, luxury travel, meetings, incentives and business travel, as well as golf, ski and spa travel.
RTE, which organises more than 22 events around the world, includes three divisions; World Travel Market, IBTM World and International Luxury Travel Market.
RTE is a business unit of Reed Exhibitions.
About Reed Exhibitions
Reed Exhibitions is the world’s leading events organiser, with over 500 events in 43 countries. In 2014 Reed brought together over seven million event participants from around the world generating billions of dollars in business. Today Reed events are held throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa and organised by 41 fully staffed offices. Reed Exhibitions serves 43 industry sectors with trade and consumer events. It is part of the RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.