After almost two years of worldwide pandemic we are ready for discovering new destinations, we want diverse and exciting places far away from home. On press trip to Dominican Republic I had opportunity to speak with Raquel Krueggeler – Communications Manager of Eurowings Discover – a brand new airline company within Lufthansa group and on their initial flight to Puerto Plata I had chance to discuss more about their company, destinations and plans.
For the start of this interview I am interested to hear more about Eurowings Discover…how you started and what was initial idea?
Within Lufthansa group which is traditional airline we are leisure airline. We were founded in 2020 and in July 2021 we had our first flight. We have build up whole airline within one year and all of that during pandemic, but idea of creating Eurowings Discover came up before pandemic and we have to thank our CEO that he pushed the project in the most dificult time for the whole airline industry. He believed in idea of creating Eurowings Discover and now when pandemic is hopefully on its end we see that idea was right because leisure segment is coming back again.
What are the main hubs of Eurowings Discover?
Our main hub is Frankfurt, Lufthansa is based in Frankfurt and all passengers using Lufthansa group flights can use Frankfurt as a hub and then fly with Eurowings Discover for their leisure voyages, but from March 2022 we are opening also Munich as our second hub.
Tell us something more about your destination concept – which part of the world passengers can discover with you?
We started with Mombasa, Zanzibar as well as Punta Cana and Windhoek, quite different destinations, two in Africa and one in the Caribbeans. Those three destinations were just our first, and now we have much more destinations that we are offering to our passengers. We have different destinations in the Caribbean region, We are flying to USA, we already started with flights to Tampa but many USA destinations are to come this year, we are also offering Canada from this year. We have strong focus on Africa – we fly to Windhoek, to Victoria Falls – we are only leisure airline within Europe flying to that amazing destination, we fly to Mauritius and Indian ocean and we are not offering just intercontinental flights. We have already started offering short-haul flights within Europe such as flights to Canary islands and for summer 2022 we are flying to many destinations in Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria and many more.
Beside Germany, which markets are in your focus?
Beside German market we hope that passengers from all over Europe will be using our services because our hubs in Frankfurt and Munich can be used for their leisure flights and all of that within FIDA system, so it is very convinient to all passengers and not just for our consumers in Germany. As we are offering a lot of new flights in USA, we are also expecting passenger from USA, Canada and other destinations to use our services for flying to Frankfurt, Munich and the rest of Europe.
What are your promotional activities and ideas?
We have already started with marketing campaigns, and for us, the most important selling point is being part of Lufthansa group, we are 100% daugther airline within Lufthansa group but we are also somehow different than Lufthansa because their main focus is on business segment and our main focus is leisure. Also, there is difference between Eurowings and Eurowings Discover. Eurowings Discover use Lufthansa hubs of Munich and Frankfurt while Eurowings fly from Cologne, Stuttgart, Leipzig and other city airports. We are trying to differentiate from each other and offer different types of services. Eurowings brand is already known in Europe and that helps us also because passenger already know our airline group and that is good for our promotional campaigns and overall marketing.
At the end of this interview I would like to ask you how worldwide pandemic past two years have affected tourism and airline industry and is this situation changed habits of passengers?
I have the feeling that customers right now are looking for destinations far away from home, people are spending so much time in their homes, and they want to ,,escape,, they are looking for something new and to discover new destinations, and that is even one of our slogans ,,Discover something new,,
We are offering diverse and exciting destinations in Europe and in whole world to our customers who wants to experience something new and with our variety of destinations they have possibility to choose their favorite discovery.
Eurowings Discover connects Frankfurt in Germany with beautiful Puerto Plata (POP) in the Dominican Republic by two weekly flights. The Dominican Republic is one of the top destinations of the young Lufthansa Group leisure airline and especially Puerto Plata is a wonderful addition in the dreamlike Caribbean.
Eurowings Discover further serves the route from Frankfurt to Punta Cana up to seven times a week and from Munich to Punta Cana twice a week.
