Avinor at World Routes

The world's largest route development conference opened Saturday afternoon in Durban, South Africa, and the team from Norway is well underway with the tasks on the agenda. Innovation Norway is participating with Avinor.

The aim of attending the conference is to strengthen relationships with existing partners and work strategically to build new ones. This may be new airlines or collaboration with relevant suppliers to Avinor.

“World Routes is a very important arena for us to attend since most airports, airlines and tourism suppliers are present,” says Jasper Spruit, director of traffic development at Avinor and Oslo Airport.

He describes a hectic schedule of meetings throughout the day, and dinners with potentially important partners.

“The meetings during the day are a bit like speed dating, where people meet for twenty minutes to discuss the development of existing routes or the commercial basis for new routes. We have to be well-prepared before all the meetings, and Team Avinor and Innovation Norway have done their homework,” he says.

In all, Avinor/Oslo Airport and Innovation Norway will take part in more than 100 meetings during the conference.

Durban is the host city
This year's host city is Durban, South Africa, while next year's conference will take place in Chengdu, China. The European variant, which Avinor also attends, will take place in Krakow in April 2016. Representing Avinor and Oslo Airport in addition to Jasper Spruit are route developers Charlotte Malling and Iver Holter-Andersen. The Communications Department is represented by Joachim Westher Andersen.

Also present is Stein Ove Rolland, international marketing manager at Innovation Norway. He has high praise for the collaboration with Avinor and believes it is a precondition for developing tourism in Norway.

“Avinor and Innovation Norway have a longstanding strategic partnership to develop traffic to Norway. It is very effective and valuable for Innovation Norway and Norwegian tourism. Avinor is the Norwegian tourism industry’s most important partner,” says Rolland.

The conference ends Tuesday afternoon.