Emirates wins Gold at the 2026 Global Performance Marketing Awards

Emirates has won Gold in the inaugural Best Travel, Leisure & Experience Campaign category at the 2026 Global Performance Marketing Awards.

Emirates was recognised as the first-ever winner of the Best Travel, Leisure & Experience Campaign award for its work to transform its affiliate marketing programme in Asia Pacific (APAC) - one of the world’s most competitive travel markets where online travel agencies, airlines and travel agents all compete for the same affiliate partners.

The airline rebuilt its affiliate marketing programme by shifting from broad publisher volumes to a refined partner base that works harder without sacrificing efficiency, strengthening direct relationships, and focusing on investments that delivered the greatest impact, along with expanding into new affiliate partner categories. As a result, the airline’s revenue growth from performance marketing in APAC rose 31% in a single year.

At Emirates, performance marketing operates as a strategic engine for customer growth, not only as a marketing channel. An internal team of specialists combine channel expertise with advanced analytics, attribution, customer insights and rich first-party data, and keep a consistent focus on driving incremental revenue, customer quality and lifetime value.

Boutros Boutros, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing & Brand for Emirates Group, said: “We’re proud to be recognised at the Global Performance Marketing Awards. This accolade underscores the team’s commitment to deliver real value for our customers and for the business. Performance marketing is a fundamental commercial growth driver for Emirates, and the team’s rigorous, data-led approach combined with smart automation, delivers substantial value back to the business. Their success is driven by clear strategy, well-defined objectives and disciplined execution, and we’ve improved both the quality of our bookings and revenue outcomes in APAC. It’s a win-win, and congratulations to all the teams involved.”

Emirates’ performance marketing at a glance

• A core team in Dubai covers affiliate marketing, paid search and metasearch, supported by over 60 digital marketing colleagues and hundreds of partners globally. Together, these three channels delivers more than a third of new customers acquired through emirates.com. 

• The team manages strategy and execution for more than 5,000 always-on campaigns worldwide across search engines, flight search websites and affiliate marketing partners. Big data from partners powers this always-on engine and guides strategic investment decisions supporting more than 4,000 routes in 80 markets.

• High levels of automation and strict processes allow the team to operate at this scale while keeping decisions consistent, with dedicated specialists across each discipline ensuring best-in-class execution and governance.

• Exclusive partnerships enable Emirates to bring industry-first and industry-leading advertising solutions to market.

About the awards

The Global Performance Marketing Awards recognise work that drives measurable growth across performance and partnership marketing, and represent the collaborative efforts of brands, agencies, publishers and technology platforms. Entries are scored independently by multiple senior judges from brands, agencies and publishers across the industry, assessing each entry on strategic clarity, quality of execution, partnership collaboration and measurable commercial impact.

This latest win follows Emirates’ shortlisting at the Global Search Awards for Best Use of Search (Travel/Leisure).