Aerospace

Oman Air targets UK business travellers

Posted 21 January 2019

The UK based team of Oman Air, the national carrier of the Sultanate of Oman, today announced the appointment of a new corporate account manager and role expansion of its leisure account manager, to aid plans to further develop the UK corporate market.

Courtesy Oman Air

Darren McCormick has been appointed as corporate account manager effective on 14 January 2019. This is a new role for Oman Air which will see Darren developing and promoting the airline to the corporate and SME market. He will be based in Manchester, working alongside Oman Air’s Manchester district sales manager Feysal Nagi.

Darren will be responsible for expanding Oman Air’s presence in the north, where the service has been in operation since 2017 providing business travellers seamless connections via Oman Air’s hub, in Muscat, to a wide range of destinations across the globe.

He brings 22 years travel industry experience with him having previously worked at Airline Network for seven years. During his time there he held various roles including price business analyst, fares manager, and reservations manager. Darren was also head of aviation at Travel Counsellors Limited between 2005 and 2012, before working at Etihad Airways as team leader and as performance manager.

With MICE travel emerging as an important sub-sector of tourism for Oman, Poonam Gill-Khosa’s role as leisure account manager is being extended to incorporate MICE travel as part of her responsibilities within specialist sales. Poonam is based in the London Oman Air office.

Poonam boasts 12 years of aviation experience having worked at Etihad Airways as group sales coordinator, reservation and ticketing agent, and sales support executive, before joining Oman Air. Her role will include creating tailor-made packages of products and services to suit the particular requirements of business delegates.

Kelpesh Patel UK country manager, Oman Air, said: “With our award-winning first class and business class offering, I believe there is a real opportunity for Oman Air to showcase its offering and attract more business travellers and I’m delighted that Poonam and Darren will be at the forefront.

"Growing business travel from the UK is certainly one of our priorities and with an increasing demand of MICE travellers to the sultanate, it is essential that we have dedicated staff at Oman Air to support this. I am confident that Poonam and Darren will be instrumental in helping us achieve our goals.”