Emirates airlines would like to increase the frequency of it flights to Iraq and “expects” to have three daily services to Basra, Baghdad and Erbil to meet surging demand for flights to and from the country, the MEED Hotel & Investment Summit was told on 9 June.

Emirates began flying to Baghdad in 2010.

“If I had the opportunity right now, I would add flights without thinking twice,” Emirates senior vice president for commercial operations in the Gulf, Middle East, Iran and Central Asia Majid al-Mualla said.

“We have six flights to Erbil at present,” Al-Mualla said. “We will, in coming months, go to daily flights and hopefully in the winter we will be interested in more flights.” The number of flights Emirates can get to Iraq, including Iraqi Kurdistan, is determined by bilateral agreements with the government of Iraq.

Al-Mualla said air routes into Iraq were the fastest-growing in the world and that the growth in passenger traffic since Emirates launched its services to Erbil last year has broken its own records.

“Since we have started our services to Erbil in August 2012, we have carried around 105,000 passengers both ways,” Al-Mualla said. “The current annualised growth rate on the route is 240 per cent. I’ve been in Emirates for 17 years and I’ve never [seen] such growth.”

Al-Mualla said that 55 per cent of its traffic into Erbil involves traders and corporate travellers. Tourists account for less than 5 per cent of the total.

“We expect to see strong growth in trader and workforce passenger traffic,” Al-Mualla said. “In the coming years, the route into Iraq will be one of the busiest involving passengers from Europe and the Americas and particularly to Erbil,” Al-Mualla said. “This is a good opportunity for the hotel industry.”

Al-Mualla said Emirates can break even on its flights to Erbil on a 40 per cent seat-occupancy. He said that the airline had a complete pay-back on its investment in setting up its Erbil services in two weeks.

Al-Mualla said the Erbil aviation boom is increasing demand for new facilities in the city. “Erbil needs a lot of infrastructure in terms of hotels, shopping centres and other projects like convention and exhibition places,” Al-Mualla said.

Al-Mualla said that Emirates forecasts that the number of people flying to destinations in Iraqi Kurdistan would rise to more than 2 million in 10 years and to more than 4 million in 20 years. The conference was earlier told that the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) aimed to have a total of 4 million tourists in 2015 compared with 2.2 million in 2012. A significant portion of that total was accounted for by visitors from other parts of Iraq.