Air Serbia to tap into long haul leisure market
Air Serbia is set to enter the long haul leisure market with the launch of flights between Belgrade and Havana this coming winter. The scheduled seasonal service is expected to commence by the end of the year. The Serbian carrier has also said it is looking eastwards for similar routes in the future. The carrier’s main aim is to improve the utilisation of its long haul fleet over the winter months, while benefiting from its cooperation with local tour operators, as well as transfer traffic from the region and beyond. As the airline finalises its 2022/23 winter season network, tickets are expected to go on sale in the coming month.
Air Serbia has previously explored opportunities to launch long haul flights to far-away leisure destinations but concluded there was insufficient demand. In 2016 the airline said, “There are very few destinations where you can fly the A330 that are going to be appealing to tour operators. Serbia is a price sensitive market and when we gauged interest for charters to Thailand - which is further to fly to than New York - the economics required to make it breakeven were too large. Another option we considered was the Caribbean, but that also can't be sustained from a market such as Serbia”, the national carrier’s former CEO, Dane Kondić, said six years ago.
Several years later, market conditions have changes, and figures indicate that there is a sufficient number of passengers originating from Belgrade to potential leisure hotspots. Over the last five years, Serbian tour operators have significantly diversified their travel packages, with many offering holidays to Cuba, Bali, the Seychelles, Maldives, Mexico, Zanzibar and Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the Serbian government has inked a number of Air Service Agreements and Memorandums over the past few years with countries which could be of interest to potential long haul leisure operations including the Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka. Based on data from global travel provider OAG, the table below displays passengers who flew indirectly between Belgrade and select far-away destinations on a single itinerary during the pre-pandemic 2019. They do not include travellers who may have opted to fly from different airports or more than one itinerary.
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