A significant value-added enhancement to Emirates’ website enables customers to now make bookings online - to and from multiple cities - beyond the Emirates network.  Travellers can now book flights to and from more than 300 cities not currently served by Emirates, on multiple airlines connecting to the Emirates network, on www.emirates.com.  Connections are presently available in economy class, but will soon be available in business and first class as well.

Emirates is one of the few airlines offering this multiple carrier booking capability on a global basis.  The itinerary booked must include one sector serviced by an Emirates flight.  Baggage will be checked through to the final destination, on most itineraries.  (Some countries such as the USA require immigration and customs clearance on the first point of entry.)  Some low-cost carriers are available with the new booking technology.

“In an effort to offer more advanced services to our customers, Emirates has added this new technology.  This new on-line feature will make it much easier for travellers to book their full itinerary with different carriers on the Emirates website.  Customers will have greater flexibility for booking new types of itineraries with multiple cities and stopovers,” said Richard Vaughan, Divisional Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations Worldwide, Emirates.

“For example, if one of our customers needs to conduct business in multiple European cities, this new feature allows them to quickly and simply build a multi-city itinerary.  A customer can now book flights from Dubai to London, then to Paris and on to Zurich.  The return flight to Dubai can all be booked in one simple and easy transaction on emirates.com,” Vaughan added.

Not only can customers build multi-city itineraries, they can also commence or conclude their journey from one of more than 300 new cities that have been added to the website.  This gives a customer who wishes to fly from Adelaide to Athens the ability to commence the journey from Adelaide on Virgin Blue, and then connect to Emirates flights from Melbourne to Athens via Dubai.

The booking process is seamless and remains consistent with the traditional emirates.com method, with the customer given the ability to select their preferred flights and airlines.  The resulting flights are all issued on one Emirates e-ticket, with baggage checked through to the final destination.