Emirates chief sees opportunities in future of business travel despite Zoom threat

  • Date: 26-Nov-2020
  • Source: Arabian Business
  • Sector:Transport
  • Country:UAE
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Emirates chief sees opportunities in future of business travel despite Zoom threat

Emirates Airline president Sir Tim Clark is confident business travel will not only return to pre-pandemic levels, but believes the Dubai-based carrier can grow in that sector, despite technology taking over during the current coronavirus crisis.

As countries closed their borders to curb the spread of Covid-19, the aviation industry saw flights grounded en masse, with businesses forced to turn to applications such as Zoom and Google Teams to keep in contact with staff, customers and clients.

Silicon Valley-based Zoom said it made a profit of $186 million on revenue of $663.5m in the quarter that ended on July 31.That compares with a net income of $5.5m in the same quarter a year earlier.

Experts had predicted this may lead to a drop of as much as 30 percent in business travel in the ‘new normal'. However, Sir Tim disagreed and pointed towards previous instances in recent history when similar predictions were made and subsequently proved false.

And he told CNN's new series Think Big that business travel is in line for a major rebound.

“What has happened is that as a result of being locked down, as a result of having to engage in the networks that you see, whether it be Zoom, Teams