05.11.2003
Danes travel more to overseas destinations

There is no mistaking the trend. In recent years, Copenhagen Airport has seen an explosive growth in numbers of Danes travelling to overseas destinations. Traffic to Bangkok alone has increased by more than 10% annually in recent years. The package tour industry is facing keen competition from low cost carriers to European destinations, but long haul package tours still offer a great deal of unexploited potential, something both Kuoni (Apollo Rejser) and MyTravel are beginning to realise.

Kuoni is opening a new direct service to Cuba today, and MyTravel will follow with a new overseas route to Sri Lanka on 15 November.

“Both new services make us even more certain that there is a lot of potential in intercontinental leisure travel. We do what we can to attract the charter airlines, but we face tough competition from airports such as Arlanda outside Stockholm. In Denmark, we have a tax of DKK 75 per passenger, which goes into state coffers. No such tax is charged in the other Scandinavian countries. Although our airport charges are lower than Stockholm’s, the airlines see us as more expensive, unfortunately,” says Trille Tang Dalsgaard, head of Airline Relations at Copenhagen Airports.

The service between Copenhagen and Havana will be operated by Air Cubana and the service to Colombo, Sri Lanka, by MyTravel Airways. Both services will have flights every second week using an Airbus 330 with just over 350 seats.