Dubrovnik Airport and Ryanair are close to reaching a deal concerning the low cost airline's future operations from the city. Following talks with local authorities, the airport and Tourist Board, the budget carrier has requested for Dubrovnik Airport to reduce its fees and sign a multi-year agreement prior to it starting operations. Ryanair's Route Development Manager, Luis Fernandez-Mellado, said the budget carrier is willing to maintain year-round flights from Dubrovnik, describing it as an extremely interesting destination. He added there is already strong demand for the airline to introduce services to the coastal city, which would prove an excellent city-break option during the winter months. Mr Fernandez-Mellado also hinted at the possibility of Ryanair operating domestic flights within Croatia, noting that it runs a number of domestic services within European Union-member states.
Following talks with the airline, the Mayor of Dubrovnik, Andro Vlahušić, said the city is prepared to sign an agreement with Ryanair which would be applicable until 2024. Furthermore, the two sides will continue negotiating over the coming weeks, while a draft contract will be presented next month. In addition, the Tourist Board and local hoteliers will propose a number of desired destinations for the airline. Ryanair has so far avoided Dubrovnik due to high fees, allowing its competitors, most notably easyJet, greater access to the market.
Ryanair operates flights to a handful of cities in Croatia, including Osijek, Pula, Rijeka and Zadar, albeit on a seasonal summer basis only. The no frills carrier has selected Zadar as its seasonal base in the country, while Osijek is likely to become its first year-round destination. During the peak summer months, Ryanair will offer 10.584 seats per week from Croatia, making it the country's fifth busiest carrier in terms of capacity. One of the its main rivals, easyJet, has been successful in Dubrovnik, maintaining its position as the second busiest carrier operating out of the city in 2015, behind only Croatia Airlines. It handled 189.328 passengers on its services to and from the coastal city last year. Meanwhile, Dubrovnik Airport has seen a strong start to 2016, handling 387.898 travellers over the past five months, up 13.2% on the same period last year.
Comments
If they do launch domestic flights, I guess one of the first ones would be DBV-ZAG. What kind of frequencies are we looking at? Could they operate daily flights in winter time? I do wonder if ZAG would be flexible when negotiating with FR. They've changed and they are a much better partner/customer than they were some years ago.
DBV - ZAG would be fantastic!
How has for example Aegean held up against Ryanair on domestic flights in Greece?
That said, Ryanair can claim a year later that the route is commercially unsustainable and that they need these subsidies. Then again, it doesn't mean they will get them as OU can apply and even get them back.
As for Aegean, that's where Olympic helped a lot with their Q400s. Of course, the Atr is far more suitable for island hopping but equally so the Q400 is far better than the A320 or the B738.
Of course there are routes where the Q400 is too small (SKG, HER, RHO..) but Aegean managed to survive by charging for luggage and by reducing the quality of onboard service. Even if their service is not as good as it used to be, it's still light years ahead of FR.
So affordable fares coupled with an ok product gave them a competitive advantage vs Ryanair.
It's also worth mentioning that the Greek market is big enough to sustain a few airlines.
AirSerbia should do it as well.
Operating models have been converging for some time.
It's no secret that DBV is the best run airport in the wider region and this deal with Vueling and Ryanair are further proof of it.
The fact that FR mentioned domestic flying can only mean that DBV is after it and that they brought it up during the meeting.
So in the end OU will be pushed out of the coastal market to its home base in Zagreb which is becoming increasingly more competitive.
Unless something drastic changes, OU will keep on flying straight into a major crisis. All this reminds me of Cyprus Airways about ten years ago.
http://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/srbija.php?yyyy=2016&mm=06&dd=06&nav_id=1140468
Zato se izgleda otvaraju baze izvan svoje zemlje .
INN-NS
Don't change man, don't change.
Ryanair will fly to Pristina so there really much to gain especially in summer
EasyJet has weekly flights during summer
Amsterdam 3x (OU 1X, HV 4X)
Berlin 3x (AB 1x, 4U 1x)
Bristol 2x (TOM 1x)
Edinburg 2x (LS 2x)
Geneva 4x
London 14x - LGW 9x LTN 2x, STN 3x (BA 6x, TOM 2x, D6 2x, ZB 2x)
Milan 3x
Paris 5x (OU 4x, TC 2x)
Toulouse 2x
So during winter there should be at least
- 3x weeky London (out of 14x easy and 12x others weekly)
- 2x weekly Paris (out of 5x easy and 8x others weekly
- 1x Amsterdam (out of 3x easy and 5x others weekly)
- 1x Berlin (out of 3x easy and 2x others weekly)
- 1x Geneva (out of 1x easy weekly)
246961 (235311)
Absolute nonsense.
INN-NS
ARGH it would be great if they flew from Belgrade. :(
They could fly every day up to 6 legs as LX does with their B777.
For my opinion destionations up to 1:30 would make sense.
Regards from LX
More fantastic news for INI! Numbers will boom once Ryanair starts flying from there as well!
https://flyfromnis.blogspot.rs/2016/06/skoro-6000-putnika-tokom-maja-letelo-iz-Nisa.html
How many does SPU have? Also can't Italy and Venice be considered south-eastern Europe?
Of course Ryanair will get huge subsidies. Even city of Dubrovnik said so. I just hope other airlines (easyJet, Eurowings, Lufthansa, Austrian, Croatia, Turkish, British...) will ask for legal protection because of nonlegal financial help by local government. Let me just remind you how Ryanair was yelling about Air Serbia subsidies.
- Athens
- Istanbul
- Santorini
- Thesaloniki
- Mykonos
- Rhodes
- Crete
- Burgas
- Varna
Typical Dubrovnik arrogance in which Dubrovnik is the only tourist place in World. There is nothing else. But when you find real data, you can see they don't have the best results by number of tourists even in Croatia.
OTP is a much bigger market in the region, or IST for that matter.
I am curious to see if the city of Dubrovnik will keep on paying that subsidy per passenger that they have been paying to OU or if they will redirect those funds to Ryanair and maybe even Vueling.
1. It is PSO, not subsidies. PSO is defined, tender was opened for any company (Ryan included), contract is signed. That does not have anything with financial help Slovenia, Cyprus, Estonia or Hungary gave to their companies.
2. Dubrovnik pays nothing to Croatia airlines. They pay money to passengers. So, passenger pays ticket to Croatia, and than with ticket gets to Dubrovnik administration which give them some money back. If someone else fly on that route passengers will also get some money back from city for their tickets.
3. Dubrovnik pays almost million EUR subsidies to airlines but not a cent of that was ever pay to Croatia airlines, just to foreign carriers for seasonal routes.
If Ryanair sues them and says that the route is unprofitable because OU is operating it while they can do it without the subsidies, then the EU Commission can force Zagreb to suspend the agreement. PSO is just a different name for subventions. I don't think they would ask OU to give back the money, they would most likely suspend the agreement.
There are legal bodies which are superior to the ones in Croatia and they can usually overrule these things.
Ryanair would be good for Dubrovnik tourism,better than the cruise liners.