Potential new holiday routes?

[JKP505]

Just seen on another forum that Thomas Cook were planning new flights to Beirut. I know before all of the trouble kicked off in Lebanon, Israel etc. that the Lebanese coast was a reasonably popular holiday destination.

Also when you look at German and Scandinavian charter destinations, they seem to have the usual (PMI, TFS, DLM, CFU etc. etc.), but they also have quite a lot that we don't have access to.

I know we already do have some of these (from LGW and MAN) but not the range of departure points that Germany and Scandinavia have:

Hapag-Lloyd: Araxos/Patras, Greece; Antalya, Turkey (18 departure points); Jerez, La Palma (Canaries) and Tenerife (North), Spain.

Condor (Thomas Cook): Hurghada and Sharm el Sheik, Egypt (8 and 7 departure points); Karpathos, Greece; Lamezia Terme, Italy;

Air Berlin: Samos, Greece (8 d.p.); Djerba, Tunisia (6 d.p.); Agadir, Morocco (6 d.p.); Lisbon and Porto, Portugal (about 26 d.p. each!)

So I want to know why we don't have this choice, when Germany and Scandinavia does? Are these to upmarket for trashy British holidays or what?

[WHBM]

The majority of these flights are to serve inclusive holidays, so it is really just down to which hotels have done deals with tour operators from certain countries, and the flights will follow. Yes, German operators dominate in the minor Canary Islands, UK ones dominate at Sanford, etc. From Finland there is more traffic to The Canaries than to mainland Spain, despite the additional distance. Ireland in contrast is the reverse, favouring Malaga over The Canaries.

Hotels (or groupings of them) will form associations with favoured clients over the years, as in all business areas. In addition they will try to have staff that speak the language of the incoming customers, and they cannot do this for all languages.

There are also cultural traditions. Malta is predominately a UK destination, although they are now building up from Eastern Europe and Russia. Ireland has strong links with Italy, and Germany with Turkish resorts.

[The SSK]

Years ago I did a very comprehensive survey into charter flows to from and within Europe. It threw up very many interesting insights into apparent national preferences for destinations, but one thing which was abundantly clear was that the Germans were by far the most adventurous travellers in terms of destination, they went just everywhere.

[WHBM]

Desk Jockey:

I wonder if the reason for the German charters to all their long haul destinations is just that there are less scheduled services available from Germany. Take the Caribbean. There are plenty of BA, Virgin, BWIA, Air Jamaica etc services from Britain. Not the case from Germany. Likewise to other points like Africa.

Frankfurt, the German scheduled service hub, is not the largest city in Germany at all. It is not even a particularly large city. So it's more difficult for the majority of the population to get onto such long haul schedules as do exist. Hence probably the large number of long haul charters (not many of which, by the way, actually start from Frankfurt).