As the first direct flight from Australia to the Maldives prepares for takeoff from Melbourne on Monday, Luxury Escapes co-founder Adam Schwab says they’d love to expand and have flights from Sydney and Perth.
The Melbourne to Maldives flight, the first direct flight from Australia to the Maldives, takes off every Monday, and Schwab says there are “plans to make it more regular “.
He says they’d also love to have direct flights from other Australian cities.
“We’d love to get a flight out of Sydney, potentially Perth, and we’d love to get flights to other destinations. At the moment, it’s a matter of getting the metal, getting the planes, but if we can, we certainly will.
“We’ve seen some great success since we announced the new direct flights and put them on sale.
“Australians are excited by both the convenience and the pricing, so clearly there’s a great product market fit for this flight.
“We’d love to offer more of these flights to more Australians to get to paradise quicker and more cheaply.”
He says the move to offer direct flights has been years in the planning.
“From a Luxury Escapes end, we’ve wanted to have Maldives flights for six or seven years, and it’s taken us a long time to try and find the right partner.
“We found our way to Maldivian, which is the national flag carrier for the Maldives, and they’ve been a fantastic partner for us.
“We have a really strong number of Australians who go to the Maldives each year, and up until now, it’s been really difficult to get to.”
He says they chose the Maldives because it’s a destination that sells well for Luxury Escapes (the flights are only offered to LE customers) and it doesn’t have “great airlift”.
“We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who go to Bali each year on Luxury Escapes, but Bali’s got fantastic flights currently, so we don’t need to put another flight onto Bali. Same with Singapore, which also has amazing flight connections with lots of different carriers.
“But if you look at the Maldives, we’ve got around 50 per cent market share, one in every two Australians who goes to the Maldives will go through Luxury Escapes, it’s a destination that’s really popular.
“We’ve got a huge number of Australians who want to go to the Maldives, and at the moment, with no direct flight, it can take up to 24 hours to get there, so our new direct flights save a huge amount of time. It’s around 11 hours direct.”
As for whether prices have been impacted by fuel surcharges, Schwab says not really.
“At this stage, we’ve kept pricing really competitive, and we haven’t really increased that at all as a result of fuel surcharges.
“The agreement we have was to keep the pricing flat for the first six months. This is compared to pretty much every other destination globally, which is seeing some really significant fuel charges impact.
“Australians can actually get to the Maldives for much cheaper than comparable destinations around the world. Bizarrely, the oil price spike has actually made our pricing relatively cheaper.”
For more information, visit Luxury Escapes.
