Emirates plans to ramp up passenger numbers on its A380 services to Beijing and Shanghai from July, strengthening its mainland China offering.
The airline will upgrade its second daily flights on these routes to an A380 aircraft from the current Boeing 777-300ER.
In operation from July 1, the service will increase capacity on flights to both Beijing and Shanghai in China, where it also flies to Guangzhou, Yinchuan and Zhengzhou.
An Emirates A380 has about 519 seats on its routes to China.
“The additional seats on the routes will support more business and leisure travel departing from and arriving in China,” Emirates said.
In its latest annual report, Emirates said revenue from East Asia and Australasia increased marginally by 0.9 per cent to Dh22.6 billion compared to the previous financial year.
The region contributed 27 per cent of the airline’s total revenue at Dh83.7bn, the largest after Europe, in the 2016-2017 financial year.
Last May, Emirates started flying to Yinchuan and Zhengzhou. The airline now flies to six destinations in China.
The number of Chinese tourists to the UAE has been on the rise since Chinese visitors were granted visa on arrival starting in November last year. In the first quarter, the number of Chinese visitors to Dubai rose 64 per cent to 230,00 compared with a year ago.
China became the fourth largest source market for tourists for Dubai after India, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
Inbound tourism in China is also increasing, including from the Middle East. Last year, 28.1 million foreign visitors traveled to China, up by 8.3 per cent compared with the previous year, according to the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) in Beijing.
During the first three months of the year, 1,600 tourists from the UAE visited mainland China, up 4.6 per cent year-on-year, the CNTA said.
The head of the CNTA, Li Jinzao, expects China’s tourism sector to experience what he calls a golden period from now to 2040, and forecasts direct investment in rural travel, big data and tourism equipment, to increase 20 per cent year-on-year in 2017 to 1.5 trillion yuan (Dh800bn).
Investment increased 29 per cent year-on-year in 2016, according to the CNTA.
China’s increasing push to improve connectivity with the UAE is part of its One Belt, One Road economic policy, which was first announced in 2013.
The third Dubai Week is scheduled to take place in Shenzhen in October, according to the organiser Falcon & Associates, a strategic advisory company set up in 2009 to work for the Dubai leadership. The event expects to strengthen economic ties between Dubai and China.
China is Dubai’s biggest trading partner since 2014 and UAE-China bilateral trade amounted to US$45 billion last year.
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