Emirates has re-launched its Dubai Connect offer which gives customers transiting through its hub a complimentary hotel stay in Dubai.

The offer is available to customers booked in all classes with a best connection time that exceeds ten hours.

Dubai Connect ensures that travelling through Emirates’ hub is seamless despite the altered flight schedules during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Emirates now serves over 90 destinations across six continents across the globe, connecting customers to key destinations across Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa and Australasia with one stop in Dubai.

With Dubai Connect, Emirates passengers will receive a complimentary night’s stay in a four or five-star hotel, ground transfers to and from the airport, meals at the hotel as well as UAE visa on arrival where required.

The service aims to provide customers whose best connection time is between ten and 24 hours, a more convenient travel journey.

Emirates ensures all its customers are well catered for.

Those who qualify for Dubai Connect but are unable to leave the airport, will be given access to the Emirates Dubai Connect airport lounge to unwind and relax.

Customers with new or existing bookings, travelling from December 1st are eligible for the offer.

Also today, the airline said it had completed an intensive programme to clear its backlog of refund requests which was caused by pandemic-related travel disruption.

Over the seven-month period starting April, Emirates received, validated and processed nearly 1.7 million refund requests.

This resulted in the airline returning AED6.3 billion refunds to its customers.

Of this sum, AED 4.7 billion was refunded to customers who had booked directly with the airline, and the remainder was returned via travel agencies.

In addition, Emirates managed over 130,000 refunds-related queries from customers and travel agency partners and made status changes to nearly four million flight coupons.

At the peak of its project, Emirates had 110 personnel dedicated to validating and processing refunds, massively increased from the 19-person team pre-pandemic.

The airline managed this by internally moving personnel from other functions to assist in this endeavour.

Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, said: “In the early months of 2020, Covid-19 massively disrupted travel around the world and led to an unprecedented volume of refunds requests across the aviation and travel industry, including at Emirates.

“It was not a situation any airline wanted, particularly while also facing a cash crunch from drastically reduced operations.

“Through those difficult months, as we dealt with the impact of the pandemic on our business, we’ve never lost sight of our commitment to our customers.”