Economic and Political Instability Affecting the Attractiveness of Selected Air Travel Destinations Close to Continental Europe from 2000 to 2019
- Luiz Henrique Werneck de Oliveira
Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC), PGT · Zukunft Consulting
- Event
- XIX SITRAER – São José dos Campos, SP, Brasil, October 25–27, 2022
- Volume
- Proceedings of SITRAER 2022 – Air Transportation Symposium · ISSN 2448-1912
- Pages
- 344–354
- Publisher
- Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa em Transporte Aéreo (SBTA)
- Editors
- Giovanna Miceli Ronzani Borille, Rogéria de Arantes Gomes, Evandro José da Silva, Mauro Caetano, Cláudia Azevedo Pereira
Abstract
Tourism by air travel is an important economic activity that generates and transfers wealth, improving the economics of specific air travel destinations. This article investigates how economic and political instability affected the attractiveness of tourism of European travelers to Mediterranean and Atlantic Islands versus Egyptian and Turkish coasts from 2000 to 2019 by computing yearly airport patronage of Spanish (Baleares and the Canaries) and Greek islands which face increasing competition from resorts on the shores of Egypt and Turkey. Yearly throughput of airports within these countries were computed: 3 airports at Baleares, 6 at the Canaries in Spain, 8 at the Greek Islands, 3 in Egypt (Red Sea and the Sinai) and 5 airports at Turkish by the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas along the period. Growth trends differ in stability and pace, with acceptable R2 regression indexes on the 2000-2009, 2010-2019, and 2000-2019 periods. Poorer R2 values were found when the bundle of airports faced economic instability and further poorer when subject to political instability, as it was the case of Egypt and Turkey within the 2010-2019 periods. All destinations were mildly affected by economic downturn after the 2008 global financial crisis but emerging tourism destination groups at Egypt’s Red Sea and Sinai and Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coasts have suffered more dramatically from local political instability events in recent years. However, as the former has not fully recovered its growth trend falling further behind the European offshore destinations after a terrorist attack destroyed an aircraft leaving one of its resorts in 2015, the latter has quickly recovered as a popular tourism destination within short flights from central Europe. Hence, the evidence computed shows that political instability and terrorism outweighed the effects of economic downturn in these air travel destinations, although this may be reversible, as observed in Turkey.
Keywords: Air Travel; Tourism; Economic Instability; Political Instability; Passengers Movements