Campaigners hit back at airport tourism claims
By Expansion of Bristol International Airport (BIA) during the last decade has not resulted in a boom for the South West tourism industry, according to a new study.
While passenger numbers doubled between 2001 and 2007, the region’s tourist trade fell by 10% in real terms, according to the Stop Bristol Airport Expansion (SBAE) group.
Report author Jeremy Birch added that the figures did not support claims by management that expansion of the airport will boost local tourism.
His comments came on the day it emerged the decision from North Somerset Council over plans to expand the airport to cope with an extra four million passengers a year would be delayed until next February.
A decision was due to be made on December 9, but councillors have decided to spend more time pouring through the responses.
BIA bosses revealed five new routes and a new aircraft from Ryanair on Thursday, with flights to Faro, Gdansk, Treviso, Palma and Valencia starting in February — bringing Ryanair’s total number of routes from Bristol to 35.
The airport also revealed that passenger numbers in October were down 1% on last year and the year-to-date is 10.75% down on 2009.
A spokesman for BIA said the investment by Ryanair was a “vote of confidence” in the region and underlined the need to go ahead with the airport’s ambitious plans to double the size of the terminal building, create 3,500 jobs and add £170m to the regional economy.
While bosses maintained that expansion of the airport was essential, Mr Birch said the pattern of expansion showed the local tourism industry would be damaged rather than helped.
“When you start looking closely at the data it’s clear that many people who would have spent time and money in the South West have been flying abroad instead – and it’s the South West tourism industry, one of the region’s major employers, that’s been losing out.
“There’s no complicated maths in this study – the story is all there in the data from government and regional tourism agencies. It is very clear that expanding airports not only fails to boost regional tourism, but actually damages it.”
While passenger numbers at BIA more than doubled — from 2.67 million in 2001 to 5.88 million in 2007 — the former Avon area lost 3,340 full-time jobs in tourism.
In the same period, 44,761 full-time jobs in tourism were lost across the whole of the South West. Although the region’s other airports also grew during this period, BIA is by far the largest, handling six times more passengers than Exeter.
Mr Birch said the data came from the Civil Aviation Authority, South West Tourism and the UK Tourism Survey for the South West, and urged those in support of expansion to reconsider their views in light of their report.
Surely jobs created directly and indirectly as part of the airport expansion also count as 'jobs in tourism'?
But in any case, it seems silly to me to use this as an argument in favour of or against airport expansion. Besides the fact that the factual evidence is on extremely shaky ground here (it's just impossible to estimate past or future effects of BIA expansion on tourism within the region within an acceptable margin of error here), does anyone seriously believe that people who want to go abroad for holiday will not go abroad if they have to travel/drive 2 hours to another airport (B'ham, Manchester, London, Cardiff)?
And even if there was a proven negative effect on the local economy, do we really want to actively discourage people from seeking out foreign places, or even non-local places? If so, maybe we should just impose an exit tariff for all South West residents whenever they leave the region, be it by car, train or plane?