Emirates has won Gold in the inaugural Best Travel, Leisure & Experience Campaign category at the 2026 Global Performance Marketing Awards, becoming the first-ever recipient of the newly introduced award. The award recognises Emirates’ efforts to transform its affiliate marketing programme across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, one of the world’s most competitive travel markets, where airlines, online travel agencies and travel agents compete for the same network of affiliate partners.
Strategic Shift Drives 31% Revenue Growth
Emirates redesigned its affiliate marketing strategy by moving away from focusing primarily on publisher volumes and instead developing a more refined portfolio of high-performing partners. The airline strengthened direct relationships with key partners, concentrated investment on activities delivering the greatest commercial impact and expanded into new categories of affiliate partnerships.
The approach helped Emirates achieve a 31% year-on-year increase in revenue generated through performance marketing in APAC. The transformation reflects Emirates’ broader approach to performance marketing, which it considers a strategic driver of customer growth rather than simply another marketing channel.
Data and Analytics Power Global Marketing Strategy
A specialist team based in Dubai combines expertise in affiliate marketing, paid search and metasearch with advanced analytics, attribution, customer insights and first-party data. The team maintains a strong focus on generating incremental revenue, improving customer quality and increasing long-term customer lifetime value.
Boutros Boutros, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing & Brand for Emirates Group, said the recognition highlights the team’s focus on delivering measurable value for both customers and the business. He said performance marketing has become a fundamental commercial growth driver for Emirates, with a data-led approach and smart automation helping improve both booking quality and revenue performance across APAC.
Emirates Runs More Than 5,000 Global Campaigns
It’ performance marketing operation covers affiliate marketing, paid search and metasearch, supported by more than 60 digital marketing professionals and hundreds of partners worldwide. Together, these three channels account for more than one-third of new customers acquired through Emirates’ website, emirates.com.
The team manages strategy and execution for more than 5,000 always-on campaigns globally, covering search engines, flight-search platforms and affiliate marketing partners. Data generated through these partnerships helps guide investment and marketing decisions supporting more than 4,000 routes across 80 markets.
High levels of automation and strict operational processes enable Emirates to manage the scale of its global performance marketing activities while maintaining consistency, governance and execution standards. The airline also uses exclusive partnerships to introduce new advertising solutions and develop industry-leading marketing initiatives.
Global Awards Recognise Measurable Commercial Impact
The Global Performance Marketing Awards recognise brands, agencies, publishers and technology platforms for campaigns that deliver measurable results through performance and partnership marketing. Entries are independently assessed by multiple senior industry judges from brands, agencies and publishers. The judging process considers strategic clarity, execution quality, partnership collaboration and measurable commercial impact. The latest Gold award adds to Emirates’ recent recognition in the performance marketing space, following its shortlisting at the Global Search Awards in the Best Use of Search – Travel/Leisure category.
