Blame put on tourism tax as Irish airports report 13% drop in traffic

By Niamh Hennessy

Monday, February 08, 2010

IRISH airports were among the worst-performing in Europe last year, with analysts blaming the tourism tax for a 13% fall in traffic.

This compares with traffic falls of 7.2% in Britain, 8.1% in Spain and 2.3% in Italy.

Ireland comes sixth-from -bottom among 34 European countries, according to figures compiled by airline analysts anna.aero.

The report said Ireland "appears to be the paying the price for introducing a tourism tax during the year, at a time when other countries were trying to find ways of encouraging rather than discouraging airtravel".

According to the figures, traffic at Cork Airport fell by an average of 15.1% up to the end of November last year. At Dublin Airport traffic was down just over 12% for the same period.

Traffic at Shannon was down more than 30% in November, according to the analysis, – one of the sharpest drops for that month across Europe.

There was positive news for Knock Airport however, as traffic there grew by an average of 5.5% in the second half of last year.

The figures look at traffic from 300 European airports. Just four of the 33 countries analysed reported air traffic growth.

"Morocco and Turkey are both developing markets which appear to have benefited from being slightly outside the European mainstream. Albania and Latvia are basically one-airport countries dominated by fast-growing Tirana and Riga," according to the anna.aero report.

Europe’s "big five" markets averaged traffic declines of around 6%, with Spain suffering the most. Seven countries including Ireland saw air travel fall by 10% or more and airlines here have slammed the Government over the introduction of the €10 travel tax.

More than 60 airportsreported growth in 2009 which, analysts say, shows that some airports have found ways to attract airlines and stimulate traffic in the current economic climate.

"The key growth-driver at these airports has clearly been the continued growth of low-cost carriers," they said.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, February 08, 2010