What makes a person choose one airline over another? Most fliers just want to get from A to B at the best price possible. For business passengers, the airline choice is more nuanced, with purchasing decisions influenced by comfort factors and loyalty programmes. However, whether you’re a backpacker or a chief executive, you want to be comfortable with the airline brand before committing to this substantial outlay.

Emirates, the gulf airline run out of Dubai, puts a lot of effort into its branding efforts in Europe. Founded in 1985, Emirates now flies to 150 destinations and is the world’s largest operator of the Boeing 777 and the double-decker Airbus A380. A large part of Emirates’ strategy centres on Dubai as a hub where people from Europe can pass through on the way to Asia, Africa and Australia.

Ireland is a case in point. Emirates started operating out of Ireland in 2012 with a single aircraft of 267 seats. Now the airline flies from Dublin twice daily, which means that country manager Enda Corneille has to fill 22,000 seats a month.

Corneille has a fine line to thread. “Emirates’ ambition is to be one of the world’s leading luxury lifestyle brands and for the name Emirates to be synonymous with aspirational travel and experiences,” he says. “Since I joined two years ago, one of the things we’ve done is to dispense any notion that the brand is unobtainable and to make it relevant to more people.”

Corneille concedes that the value for money aspect of flying with Emirates – fares east of Dublin are much cheaper that flying transatlantic – can sometimes get lost in the corporate brand messaging. Not that Emirates doesn’t try hard to be populist too. The airline is a big sponsor of football in Europe as well as sponsoring tennis, golf, F1, cricket and horse-racing.

Brand Recognition

This exposure is paying off in brand recognition, with Brand Finance recently ranking Emirates as the world’s most valuable airline brand. “The brand is number 171 in the Brand 500 and our aspiration is to get that into the top 100, so it’s a very strategic approach to branding and marketing,” says Corneille. “We are about connecting people and places and sponsorship is a great way to connect with our customers, share their interests and build relationships with them.”

Corneille gets to make some of his own sponsorship choices in Ireland. The brand’s sponsorship of TV show MasterChef was before he joined, and his call has been to send Emirates into the Dragons’ Den, the Sunday night series on RTE.

He explains: “Emirates is an airline that believes anything is possible so Dragon’s Den is a perfect fit with the Emirates story. Emirates started with two aircraft so we know what it’s like to start a fledgling business and build it into a global player. I think the alignment with Dragon’s Den is perfect and appeals to a very wide audience.”