SunExpress with highest turnover in its company history in 2017: Strategy focusses on growth and Türkiye (Turkey)

Frankfurt, February 16, 2018 – Leisure airline SunExpress has generated a record turnover of 1.15 billion Euros in 2017. The airline has carried 8.8 million passengers, which is more than 10 percent than in the previous year. SunExpress continued to commit to Türkiye (Turkey) as destination and vacation spot and expanded its Türkiye (Turkey) seat capacity with 20 percent compared to last year: 14 percent growth to Antalya, 15 percent growth to Izmir and 35 percent to Anatolia. Despite significant expansion, SunExpress has increased its seat loading factor to a yearly average of 84 percent. SunExpress was and continues to be the clear market leader in the Turkish tourist business, especially on routes to Antalya, Izmir and Anatolia.

“We have been able to convert last year’s challenges and risks into chances, and are therefore looking back on a very successful year”, says Jens Bischof, CEO of SunExpress. “We have realigned our commercial strategy, and we were able to further reduce our costs. Our approximately 4.000 employees up in the air and on the ground have consequently implemented our measures – and roughly 75 percent of our guests proved our engagement with their positive feedback, confirming that they are very satisfied and do recommend us.”

SunExpress continues its commitment to Türkiye (Turkey) as its core market, and is continuously expanding further profitable routes at the same time: capacities to Bulgaria have been significantly increased and experienced a strong passenger growth of about 27 percent.

Besides its strong presence in Türkiye (Turkey) and the Mediterranean area, like Bulgaria or Greece, SunExpress additionally is planning to grow its route network from Türkiye (Turkey) to the Middle East and Russia in summer 2018.
SunExpress further invests in its multichannel distribution strategy, especially to drive digitalization. Seat-only sales via digital channels have been enhanced with 26 percent in 2017 already.
“The close connection to tour operators, with whom we are partnering cooperatively, is one of the main pillars of our business model. We will be investing further in this great collaboration.”
The leisure carrier continues to focus on innovative approaches: As of late, SunExpress is available for its passengers via WhatsApp around the clock. The popular messenger service is used to answer questions around bookings and SunExpress services in English, German and Turkish.

Starting in March SunExpress is cooperating with Germany’s big consumer bonus program PAYBACK, with which passengers are able to collect points and redeem them on the website.