YOUR LINK TO SCANDINAVIA

Category:
AIRLINK, New Route Development, Strategy

AALBORG – NEW YORK

OBJECTIVES

When New York Times declared Aalborg the 8^th best place to visit in the world in 2019, Altantic Link started a project with Aalborg Airport to market Northern Jylland as the “Top of Europe”. In the wake of that, Atlantic Link participated in the project attracting an airline to open a new flight route from Aalborg to New York. The first transatlantic flight route from the west part of Denmark ever.

APPROACH

Our approach was to market Northern Jylland and Aalborg Airport as a gateway destination in Northern Denmark with easy access to the rest of Scandinavia. In the process of achieving the goal of an overseas flight route, Atlantic Link initiated different kinds of B2B initiatives targeting the Nordic and international market.

Our 360-degree approach

Airports has to make themselves attractive to airlines in order to build new routes – and Airlines has to spend time and invest money to start new routes.

We support airports and airlines to build sustainable business cases for new routes. We research for new opportunities and link all the right peers together.

Connecting all the peers, such as airports, other airports, airlines, destinations, government, city authorities, travel trade etc., gives a 360-degree approach for route development.

Financial commitment from all relevant stakeholders, including corporate businesses, DMOs, governmental organizations etc. secures a 100% commitment and lays the foundation for a long-term sustainable route.

Marketing and sales efforts

Our marketing efforts consisted of study trips to Northern Jylland for national and Scandinavian tour operators, and events for American tour operators. In addition to that we worked mainly with B2B platforms to connect Danish tourist actors with DMC’s and MICE agencies, who sells customized solutions to travel agencies in the North and internationally. Finally, efforts to advertise the destination nationally and internationally through travel trade initiatives, made Northern Jylland an available and well-connected destination with excellent links to Scandinavia and the rest of Europe.

RESULTS

Our efforts working with the Travel Trade, sales, marketing, and public relations during the project resulted in success of SAS opening the first ever direct overseas flight route from west Denmark. The route will be departing three times weekly from April 2023.