On the day of Emirates’ massive Melbourne Cup sponsorship spend, the airline’s Executive Vice President Maurice Flanagan says that Qantas, one of Emirates’ competitors, should fly into Emirates’ Dubai hub, saying, “I feel Emirates are natural partners with Qantas, we serve all the places in Asia and Europe that Qantas do not serve, we connect to 22 destinations in Europe while Qantas has two, so we could codeshare, or Qantas could just fly to Dubai”, adding, “We’ve made that clear to them.”
It is not very likely that QF would have any great deal of interest in the offer, potentially seeing Mr Flanagan’s suggestion as a potential foot in the door for taking over some of Qantas business.
Mr Flanagan is in Melbourne to represent Emirates at the Melbourne Cup Carnival in the Emirates tent, which is modelled on the Palace of Versailles, greeting VIPs in the ninth year of the Emirates sponsored Carnival, having also sponsored the Cup for the past two years.
Mr Flanagan said. “Sponsorship of prestigious events such as this are much more effective than advertising at raising awareness,” and while he will not reveal Emirates’ spend on the event, he did say that the airline allocates nearly 4% of its overall expenditure to marketing, spending $US5.8b in the last FY, meaning that the marketing spend was $US215m.
Report by The Mole
