easyJet is intending to operate three flights a week from London Gatwick to Amman’s Queen Alia airport, with an unbelievably low lead-in price of £106 return (US$168; JD118). That price is likely to apply to very few flights – but even if a more usual fare turns out to be double (or even triple) that figure, it will still represent by far the cheapest way to get to Jordan.

It’s hard to overestimate the potential impact. It is, in short, the biggest shot-in-the-arm for Jordanian tourism from the UK (and, arguably, for Jordanian tourism in general) since, well, ever.

For years, Jordan has suffered from poor access and high fares. Two airlines fly direct between London and Amman – BMI and Royal Jordanian. Both operate out of Britain’s least favourite airport, London Heathrow, and it’s difficult to find fares on either of less than about £450 return. From London it’s often considerably more expensive to fly to Amman (3600km) than to Muscat (5800km).

Is that through lack of demand, or lack of opportunity? Well, we’re about to find out. I’m afraid easyJet’s arrival will be a kick in the pants for both RJ and BMI.

But this doesn’t only put the cat among the pigeons as far as the airlines go. Can Jordan itself actually cope with increased numbers of British travellers on short breaks and sun-seeking holidays?

Jordan’s high visa fees, and absurdly high entry prices at Petra, will put some off.

The over-concentration of five-star hotels in Amman, Aqaba and the Dead Sea – and the lack of high-quality three- and four-star midrange properties around the country – will be shown to be a mistake.

Jordan’s focus on pouring resources into developing package tourism, to the detriment of the independent travel sector, will be exposed as short-sighted.

And cultural issues, as Brits arrive expecting Amman to be like Sharm el-Sheikh or Aqaba to be like Hurghada, may be thrown into sharp focus. Ryanair’s cheap flights to the ancient Moroccan city of Fez have been a stop-start affair, not wholly welcomed on all sides.

On the plus side – well, it hardly needs saying. This puts Jordan into the ‘A’ league of European destinations. The increased exposure, simply through being on easyJet’s route listing, is invaluable. It opens up a whole new market for Jordan, price-sensitive but potentially high-spending independent visitors, who have previously been overlooked. Tourism accounts for roughly 20% of Jordan’s GDP (the country’s second-highest earner) and employs roughly 40,000 people, thereby supporting perhaps as many as a quarter of a million Jordanians, out of a total population around 6 million. It’s not an exaggeration to say that easyJet’s arrival could signal a rise in Jordan’s standard of living.

But perhaps the most important aspect of easyJet’s announcement is the vote of confidence it represents in promoting Jordan as a safe, decent, worthwhile place to go on holiday, regardless of whatever might be going on across the border in neighbouring countries. For years now, the negative impressions garnered from the news media, and allied concerns about personal safety, have been the single hardest barrier for Jordanian tourism marketeers to surmount. Amman’s appearance in easyJet’s big, bright, friendly, orange ads, alongside Corfu, Tenerife and Majorca, is the kind of PR money simply cannot buy.

Incidentally, this is also the first British low-cost routing to an Arab capital city. I don’t want to get too dewy-eyed about it, but there’s an undeniable element of bridging a certain awareness gap there. More Westerners experiencing Arab and Muslim society first-hand, from the inside, can only be a good thing.

I sincerely hope the Jordanian tourism industry – and Jordanian society – can flex with what is a seismic shift. Heaven knows Jordan needs easyJet; but, in truth, does easyJet need Jordan? I really hope that, by the end of 2011, it will be obvious they do.

Peter Hill, Oman Air CEO

Oman Air is quietly working wonders. From a standing start in 2007, when Oman pulled out of the then-multicountry Gulf Air to focus on developing its own national carrier, the airline has gained a reputation for excellence, even while facing down competition from the ‘big three’ Gulf carriers, Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways. Peter Hill, appointed CEO in 2008, was one of the original founders of Emirates in the 1980s and previously ran Sri Lankan Airlines. He spoke to me on 9 November 2010 at World Travel Market in London; below are edited extracts of the interview.

Matthew Teller: What makes Oman Air unique?

Peter Hill: That is aligned to what makes Oman unique. We look after the travel needs of Oman from an outbound perspective, and provide nonstop, point-to-point air service. The government is looking to attract overseas business and leisure to the unique destination that is Oman, and we are working with the tourist board to make the world aware of what Oman has to offer.

Oman doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of man-made cities in this region. The national qualities of the country are [very special] – nature, peace and solitude. It’s a vast country which doesn’t have millions of people. It’s very relaxed. In Oman there is space, without the buzz of traffic.

But Oman is not as well known as it could be. We, as an airline, are working for 10-15 years ahead: we’re not going to be a global carrier, but we are aiming to become a significant player in the regional network and on routes from Europe, the Far East and Africa. There is plenty of capacity in the market.

MT: All of this is focused on drawing traffic into Oman. Is there any focus on developing a market for outbound travel from Oman?

PH: Abs0lutely. To give one example, many Omanis are buying second homes in Malaysia – the Malaysian government has set up tax breaks, made buying property an attractive option, with particular appeal to the Gulf market. Malaysia is a Muslim country, where many people speak Arabic and English – it’s an attractive option for many people. We are now codesharing with Malaysia Airlines, and seeing a lot of interest in our Muscat-KL route.

MT: Over the last year or so there’s been a series of announcements about Oman Air innovations, from the “most luxurious toilet” to onboard wifi. At a time when the industry is under great pressure, and carriers around the world are examining every element of cost in detail, why is Oman Air choosing to invest so heavily in passenger comfort?

PH: We were a late starter. Now we are competing directly with other Gulf carriers, who have set such high standards. If we will be able to make any penetration at all, we have to look at different ways of doing things. We can leverage value by doing it well – and that means improving service and experience.

I think we’re refreshing to travel with. We’ve invested hugely in interiors, in developing cuisines with imagination, a choice of wines. We offer 34-inch pitch in economy, wifi on board, you can use your mobile phone as normal once the plane reaches 10,000 feet, there’s video on demand in all classes – even live TV from BBC World, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg… It’s the challenge of being first. Someone needs to set the trend.

The sorts of complaints coming from legacy carriers in Europe – I just wonder, are these sour grapes? Are they crying because their lack of investment has simply left them uncompetitive, in comparison with Gulf carriers? People vote with their wallet. If an airline is offering pneumatic earphones, or electric headphones with an old drop-down screen, as against our technology for the same price, who are you going to go with?

We see this investment as part of the government’s plan to put infrastructure in place that will serve Oman into the future.

MT: Is Oman Air meeting national targets for Omanisation?

PH: Well, the goal is 100% Omanisation! It is understood within the airline that expats are in place to impart our knowledge and then move on. If you discount the flight crew and cabin crew, then we are currently 68% Omani. If you add in the onboard crews that figure is around 63%. Compare that with some of our regional competitors, where the equivalent figure might be 6.3% rather than 63%.

Our senior management team of ten currently includes four Omani nationals. Among pilots, the proportion is roughly 50-50. Among cabin crew it’s nearer 30-70, though all our male cabin staff are Omani.

The key is in the social changes within Oman over the last couple of years. As the image of the airline improves nationally – and internationally – so parents will increasingly view a career in Oman Air, in whichever field, as a good choice for their sons and daughters, when that may not have been the case previously.

MT: When I tweeted about this interview this morning, several people expressed interest, including Arun Rajagopal, a social media manager in Dubai, who asked me to ask you when you expect Oman Air’s Boeing 787 aircraft to be delivered and if Oman Air has any more 737 deliveries to come. That ties into a question about social media in general – what is Oman Air’s strategy for developing a presence in social media?

PH: First, to answer Arun’s question, we have six 787s on order. Boeing-willing, we will get the first of those in the first half of 2014, then two in 2016, then two in 2018. For 737s, we have an order for six, which are due for delivery in 2013 – and, in addition, we have two Embraer jets due for delivery in March/April of next year [2011], to service new domestic and regional routes.

As far as the airline’s social media strategy, well, that is in its infancy. We’ve had a lot on our plate over the last 12 to 18 months, putting in core investment, but you will see our social media presence develop over the next year.

MT: As a final question, where do you see Oman Air in five years, and ten years?

PH: I want to see Oman Air being the preferred way to travel to or from Oman – the carrier of choice. We have 23 aircraft today; in five years that will grow to 28 or 30 aircraft, and in ten years to 36 or 38. We will be aiming for a maximum of only around 50 aircraft in total, in a mix of wide-bodied and single-aisled. I don’t see us bigger than that. We want to become a major player in the region, and a significant carrier to certain global destinations which have a pre-existing relationship with Oman, both in business and leisure.

MT: Thank you very much for your time.

All content is copyright © Matthew Teller 2010. All rights reserved. Please ask me if you wish to use extracts of this material in your own content. I will usually grant consent, as long as you link back to this page.

I like the “20″. Makes me wonder: if you get to 400,000 miles in a year, do you notice the extra 20? I mean, does it drag, like the last section of a climb, or does it just sail by like all the rest?

It has to be said, though. Despite that mind-bending figure – well over 1,000 miles every single day, on average, or the annual equivalent of more than sixteen times around the Earth – it’s small beer for some. This guy Tom Stuker does more than half as much again, rather like the George Clooney character in the movie Up In The Air.

But Greenberg looked great on it. Lovely guy, really easy to talk to, very down to earth (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). He told me he never travels with checked luggage: at any one time, he has half a dozen suitcases in transit with Fedex, tracking him around the world, so they’re always there – wherever ‘there’ is – when he is. He has six houses in various countries, so if he sees something he wants to own, he buys six of them, keeps one with him and Fedexes the other five.

What struck me most, though, was that someone who is pretty much a household name in America could walk down the street in London without a glance. No disrespect to Greenberg, but despite his eminent status – and everyday prominence – he’s not just virtually unknown in Britain; I’d say he’s completely unknown. Simon Calder, Britain’s nearest equivalent to Greenberg in terms of being a serious investigative travel journalist who is perpetually on the go, could similarly (no disrespect again intended) walk down the street in NYC in peace and quiet, I’d guess.

That says a lot about this very strange industry, by definition global and outward looking, but in practice completely insular and market-restricted. US travel – its history, its direction, its favourite destinations, its preoccupations, its style – has extraordinarily little in common with, say, British travel. And British travel has got virtually nothing to do with French travel or Spanish travel, which are completely different again from Israeli, Korean or South African travel.

On the cusp of World Travel Market – one of the biggest annual events in the travel industry, which starts tomorrow in London and absorbs huge amounts of attention among travel professionals – it seems obvious to me that there is no travel industry, at least not globally. Every market is talking to itself. Although the customers are thinking about anywhere but home, for the professionals every scrap of attention is focused on what ‘home’ does.

And that goes for travel journalism, too. It’s delicious: the most determinedly global, outward-looking, cosmopolitan branch of journalism is in fact the most parochial of the lot. Travel journalism obsesses about domestic trends. Celeb gossip, business news, sport and fashion are all far more global than travel could ever be. They, at least, speak to the world.

Good on Greenberg; long may he keep flying. Journalists with his depth of knowledge, dedication and expertise are rare. This odd little business needs him.

Ryanair cabin

US airline Spirit Airlines has announced it will charge passengers who want to carry bags onto its aircraft that won’t fit under the seat in front $45 for use of the overhead bins ($30 if they pay in advance).

Irish airline Ryanair has announced that it is pressing ahead with its plan to remove two of the three onboard toilets on its planes serving routes of less than one hour, install six extra seats in their place, and develop coin-operated access to the remaining toilet: passengers who want to use it during the flight will have to pay either £1 or €1 to get access.

One of these is good business. The other is plain gouging. Which is which?

Disrepute

There seems little justification for Spirit’s charge. How can it be that the same bag – which, incidentally, remains completely untouched at all times by either Spirit staff or baggage handlers on the ground: this is not about passing on hidden costs – can command a $45 fee if it’s placed in the overhead bin rather than under the seat? Spirit is not providing a service by having the bins in place: they are providing precisely nothing more than already exists on board.

Is it about weight? No: a small bag that fits under the seats could be filled with gold bars, while a big, puffy, half-empty sports bag would have to go in the overhead bin, incurring that $45 charge.

This is simply about thinking up ways to penalise people for flying with anything other than the clothes they stand up in and – effectively – a briefcase or personal handbag. Why would they want to do that? Search me.

I’d respect them more – and, frankly, this would make more business sense too – if they ripped out all the overhead bins on their aircraft, thereby saving heaven knows how much weight onboard, and then refused to pass on the savings in fuel to their customers. That would be reprehensible, but, in the end, tolerable.

But to create a division between different classes of carry-on bags? This has been poorly thought-through, and merely brings them – and the aviation industry – into disrepute.

Good business

By contrast, Ryanair has got it right. Toilets on board planes – especially ones that are doing short-hops of under one hour – are not a right. They are a service to the customer. They cost money to install and maintain, they take up valuable on-board real estate (the sale of which is the only means for the airline to run its business) and, I’d bet, on short flights like these, they go unused 99% of the time.

Think of Ryanair like a bus company: you don’t get a toilet on board a one-hour bus ride across London. Why should you?

There’s been a lot of hot air about how Ryanair charges excessive prices for onboard snacks and drinks. Well fine: don’t buy them! It’s not obligatory to sit there stuffing your face and swigging gin and tonics! You think £2, or £5, is too much for a cup of tea? Don’t buy it. Don’t buy the scratchcards, ignore the advertising, bring your own snacks – it’s easy.

In order to benefit from what are – let’s face it – fares that everybody thought a few years back were unsustainably low (that myth’s been put to bed, hasn’t it?), treat short-hop air travel like short-hop ground travel. Go to the loo before you leave, get on, sit there like you would on a bus, then get off again. What’s not to like?

More significantly, the highly successful UAE-based low-cost carrier Air Arabia has announced that by the end of 2009 it will be launching a new airline, Air Arabia Egypt, to link several Egyptian airports with destinations in the Gulf, North Africa, Europe and the UK.

The Israel example shows the power of what the airline industry calls VFR – ‘visiting friends and relatives’. Despite the political problems, tourism to Israel has always remained buoyant, fed by special-interest religious tours in particular – but fuelled above all by VFR, especially from areas with a high Jewish population. In the UK that means, firstly, north London: even before easyJet’s launch, El Al is the only full-service national flag carrier able to maintain regular near-daily scheduled service out of Luton (and, previously, out of Stansted), in addition to its twice-daily Heathrow service. Another key VFR origin is Manchester, from where jet2 launched nonstop Tel Aviv flights in January 2009 – shortly afterwards announcing that it was doubling its peak service.

VFR out of the UK to most other Middle Eastern destinations isn’t as strong – there just aren’t that many expat Jordanians and Syrians in Britain. Air Arabia, though, has already proved that VFR works: in April 2009 it launched Air Arabia Maroc, a low-cost carrier which today links Casablanca with a clutch of francophone cities in western Europe (alongside London, Milan and elsewhere).

Its new venture, Air Arabia Egypt, on the other hand, is squarely targeting the leisure market, with multiple bases in Egypt serving different markets: Cairo and Alexandria will no doubt benefit from expanded links to Africa and the Gulf (where the large numbers of Egyptian expats brings VFR into play again), while Luxor, Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada will likely attract service chiefly from northern and western Europe. The three Air Arabias will also, no doubt, link up, making it possible to fly in a series of hops from the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal, low-cost all the way.

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary

The new venture also kick-starts a fascinating contest. easyJet, a pioneer of low-cost travel in Europe, already serves Egyptian holiday airports such as Sharm and Hurghada from the UK. It will, it seems, soon have to compete with Air Arabia, a pioneer of low-cost travel in the Middle East. Two highly successful carriers from different parts of the globe are about to meet head-to-head. Be sure that Ryanair will be watching closely.

Beside all of this, the Gulf (although aided by market protection) is able to support six more low-cost carriers – Sama, Nas, Felix, Bahrain Air, FlyDubai and Jazeera. The last of these has announced that it is searching for a new regional hub. Will it be Beirut? Istanbul? Perhaps Athens?

As Middle East airlines start reaching out towards Europe, expect an ever-intensifying clash of low-cost cultures in the months ahead.

On arrival, the immigration area was jampacked and heaving with people: later, I counted 18 flights on the screens at baggage reclaim as having arrived in quick succession at Terminal 3, almost all of them long-haul (Singapore, Delhi, Muscat, Bangkok, Dubai, etc). Even the queue for EU passport-holders stretched out of the door. I sidled over to the Fast Track lane, showed my card, and joined the shortish queue.

25 minutes later I was still standing in line. Meanwhile, the entire queue of non-Fast Tracked EU passport-holders had been processed, and the hall was three-quarters empty.

You see, this was not Fast Track for EU passport-holders. Anybody and everybody who’d flown business class on the previous 18 flights was in that queue. So the two officials posted to Fast Track were having to do complete security checks on some people, with detailed questioning and referrals, before they could issue visas, as happens at the ‘Other Nationalities’ zone. Except that Other Nationalities has about 10 or 15 desks staffed, whereas Fast Track has only two.

I don’t even know who to blame: is it BAA’s fault, or the UK Border Agency, or the airlines?

Fast Track at a British airport is a relatively simple concept to grasp: obviously, it should be for EU passport-holders only. Whoever is to blame, next time I’m opting for the ordinary line.

If you’ve ever watched any of the global English-language rolling news channels – chiefly CNN International, BBC World News or Sky News (all of which keep me company in hotel rooms around the world) – you couldn’t fail to have seen an ad or a sponsor’s message from Qatar Airways, generally playing on how luxurious their onboard service is. They’ve cornered the market in sponsoring the Sky and BBC weather forecasts, which are now topped and tailed with cute little five-second Qatar Airways clips talking about how “Tonight, we expect to see inky clouds of real Arabica coffee brewing over the Middle East” (or whatever).

All their ads end with this grotesquely offensive close-up of a female steward’s right eye, as she beams in delight and her pupil dilates with the sheer sexual thrill of anticipating being able to serve you real Arabica coffee.

That image comes directly from the Qatar Airways website. If you look closely, the tagline reads “The world’s 5-star airline”. But if you play the clip, the voiceover (and the closing image) read “World’s 5-star airline.” They’ve dropped the “The”.

The same thing is repeated throughout this page, which announced the campaign. All the original poster ads say “The” – but now, none of them does. The TV campaign features the same voiceover as when it launched, but now spoken by a different actor: at some point late last year they withdrew the original ads that used “The” and re-recorded them. Why? I don’t know.

Did someone sue them for making false claims? Is a statement such as “The world’s 5-star airline” actionable? I have no idea. But if you think about it, “World’s five-star airline” (which is now the default tagline for the global campaign) is meaningless. There is no such place as “World”. Once you notice it, the ads studiously avoid saying “The world”.

I wonder why.

And is it only me who’s noticed?

Michael O’Leary is not someone to let an inconvenient truth obstruct a higher public relations mission. The “unacceptable face of capitalism”, as Mr O’Leary’s Irish critics have dubbed Ryanair’s chief executive, has launched a salvo against airport fees in the UK generally and BAA in particular, which owns Stansted, Ryanair’s UK base. Because they are high, Mr O’Leary is slashing winter flights and moving jets elsewhere.

This is disingenuous. Ryanair, like all airlines, is cutting winter capacity. Furthermore, Stansted has never charged airlines as much as its regulators allow. Last year, the fee cap was set at £6.44. Stansted charged £5.50. This gap is a consequence of the bargaining power of its main users, Ryanair and EasyJet, and the competition it faces from other European airports.

Unlike long-haul carriers, which need to maintain feeder routes into their hubs, low-cost carriers run a series of point-to-point businesses. Aircraft are therefore mobile assets that can be parked wherever and whenever it is cheapest or most profitable to do so. Ryanair is only responding to market forces. When summer demand returns, so will the aircraft. As for UK passenger taxes, these are set to rise by 10 per cent to £11 per passenger in November, which Mr O’Leary says damages “London and UK tourism and the British economy generally”. It is true that UK duties are a European anomaly. Yet the marginal effect of that increase on a holiday’s total cost is minuscule.

The 9 per cent depreciation of sterling against the euro over the past 12 months has had a far greater impact – and may even encourage more holidaymakers to visit Britain on Ryanair than it has stopped others travelling to Europe. Mr O’Leary wants to have his cake and be applauded for eating it too.

There’s a lot of bad in BAA, for sure, but that doesn’t mean there’s a lot of good in Ryanair: O’Leary’s PR juggernaut, despite claiming to stand up for the rights of the passenger, ends up most of the time crushing any nuanced understanding of the issues.

We’d all be better served if Ryanair invested just a little bit more in customer service, if BAA stopped turning our airports into shopping malls – and if taxes on flying were charged, not on a flat rate per person, but on a sliding scale depending on how much floor-space that person’s seat occupied inside the aircraft. Small seat in 737: low tax. Flat bed in personal suite onboard A380: high tax. As well as being fair, it might just shut Michael O’Leary up for a while. Anyone got any better ideas?

Ink are market leaders, producing 30+ inflight magazines for airlines all over the world, and have won fistfuls of design awards, including for Ryanair. It’s easy to see why. Gulf Air are not exactly the most prestigious of clients – a small, struggling state-owned carrier at the unfashionable end of the Gulf – but rather than copy the kind of instantly forgettable pap that’s churned out for Etihad and Emirates by Dubai-based magazine publishers, they’ve instead created something worthy of newsstand sale. My articles aside, it’s a genuinely interesting monthly about Middle East life and culture, with a dash of Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur and occasionally Paris and London thrown in. Take a look.

Do inflight magazines matter? My impression is they do. If they’re rubbish (which, let’s face it, most still are), all they do is reinforce to Ms/Mr Traveller the sense that both the airline and the destination it ‘represents’ are rubbish: at worst (stand up Air Malta and Saudi Airlines), they turn the airline and the destination into a laughing stock. At best (Gulf, Swiss, Air Canada) they lead you intelligently into the culture and the outlook of your destination while still in midair.

And for the hard-pressed travel writer, inflight magazines are a godsend: I write for 8 or 10 of them, and would find it that much harder to make ends meet without them.