A BUSINESSWOMAN has been appointed to head up a landmark initiative set up to attract Scotland's first direct flights with China.
Fiona Hunter, a Mandarin speaker who was born in Hong Kong but now lives in Scotland, is tasked with luring a Chinese carrier to Edinburgh Airport as part of the China Air Services Project.
Scotland's busiest airport is vying with its main rival, Glasgow Airport, to become the first in Scotland to bag direct links with the world's fastest growing economy.
Ms Hunter, who lives in Currie, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, graduated from Heriot-Watt University with a degree in marketing and management and has since worked in tourism in China.
She will leave her current post as VisitScotland's Market Manager for China to take up the 12-18 month contract.
Ms Hunter said: “I am thrilled to be taking on this incredibly exciting role at such a pivotal time for Edinburgh. The city has a huge amount to offer and is only continuing to build momentum as it touches and inspires visitors, businesses and investors across the globe, including China.
"I can’t wait to be a part of making our relationship with this key market stronger and more accessible.”
A direct flight between Scotland and China is seen as the Holy Grail for the country's aviation sector, with the Scottish Government and business community eager to lure a Chinese carrier to boost Scottish exports and drive more lucrative Chinese tourism and investment into Scotland.
Outside of London, only Birmingham Airport boasts direct UK-China flights. The twice weekly Birmingham-Beijing charter service, operated by Hainan Airlines on behalf of Chinese tour company Caissa Touristic, launched on July 3.
It is understood that bosses at both Edinburgh and Glasgow Airports have been holding talks with Hainan in a bid to lure the carrier north of the Border, possibly through a "piggy-back" service that would see Scottish passengers fly to Beijing via a pick-up stop in Manchester.
The China Air Services Project is a collaboration between Marketing Edinburgh, Edinburgh City Council and Edinburgh Airport. They hope recruiting Ms Hunter will give the capital the edge over Glasgow.
The 28-year-old has been responsible in her current role at VisitScotland for recruiting Chinese travel buyers for Scotland’s travel trade show ‘VisitScotland Expo’, and regularly delivers seminars on China to marketing industry professionals.
She has also built up strong relationships with Chinese airline partners and those already active and connecting China to Scotland via hub destinations, such as Qatar Hong Kong, Qatar China, and Etihad China.
Ms Hunter added: “My understanding of cultural preferences in China paired with my strong industry relationships will enable me to showcase to this increasingly captive audience, the fantastic product we have waiting to be explored here in Edinburgh.”
Gordon Robertson, director of communications at Edinburgh Airport and chairman of Marketing Edinburgh, added: “Securing a direct route from China has been a long-term ambition for us and we’ve made significant headway in the past two years, brokering stronger partnerships and in-bound routes with Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways.
"We know that Chinese tourists are our highest spending visitors, expected to bring £30.8million of revenue to Scotland by 2021 – we would expect the new route to increase this already impressive figure considerably.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel