The Spanish airport authority AENA has extended the retail outlet Aldeasa’s duty-free concessions at 14 airports across the country until 2012.
The extended contract covers Alicante Airport, Almería, Barcelona, Bilbao, Girona, Ibiza, Jerez de la Frontera, Málaga Airport, Menorca, Palma de Mallorca Airport, Reus, Santiago de Compostela, Sevilla and Valencia.
The Spanish resort of Benidorm has surprisingly outsold Paris, Rome and Venice for short breaks over the Valentine’s weekend, with a large online travel agency reporting an increase in sales of 55% compared to this time last year.
Alicante Airport is the nearest one to Benidorm. The resort is offering an additional attraction as on February 13th there will be colourful floats, music, dancing and street entertainment at its annual ‘Carnaval’.
Ryanair have just announced new summer routes from Cork Airport for the months of June, July and August.
They will have an additional aircraft at the airport to cater for increased flights to Spain which will operate to Alicante, Barcelona (Reus), Lanzarote and Malaga Airports.
To celebrate the launch of these new summer routes Ryanair are slashing 30% off their current fares for travel in late February and March which are available for booking for three days only on www.ryanair.com
A side effect of the European Financial crisis was the widespread shortage of rental cars in Spain last summer. The situation is likely to be occur again this year as a number of rent a car companies rely on hiring in additional cars during busy periods to boost the size of their rental car fleets, and the credit crunch has made it much more difficult to temporarily obtain additional cars for the busy periods. This results in spiralling prices and a general car hire shortage.
Many travellers who did not pre-book a hire car last summer were arriving at Spanish airports (particularly Alicante and Malaga) to discover that there were no rental cars available. Rent a car companies are anticipating a similar situation in 2010 so make sure you book a vehicle well in advance as it will ensure you get a car and often secures the best deal.
If you are hoping to fly to or from Spain from the Irish Airports of Dublin, Shannon or Cork today you might have to change your plans due to strike action by air traffic controllers.
The action will have quite an impact as Dublin airport is the headquarters of AerLingus and Ryanair, and Shannon is an important stopover for passengers travelling to the USA.
The dispute is about overdue pay raises and 15 controllers being suspended for refusing to adopt the new work practices.
Ryanair has been forced to axe 52 flights which will affect 6000 passengers, but they are offering travellers the opportunity to re-book their tickets or claim a full refund. The routes most affected are flights from Dublin to Alicante Airport and Murcia Airport.
From November this year Thomson will be operating 189-seater flights from Norwich to Tenerife Airport and Alicante Airport in Spain. The weekly flights will operate for 26 weeks. The routes have been reinstated after the airport received more than 500 requests for the two destinations to be covered within the last six months.
The new routes are a boost to the airport after a number of services were either axed or reduced including direct flights to Barcelona and Palma by the Spanish airline LTE and Flybe cancelled routes to Alicante and Malaga in 2007.
Alicante El Altet Airport realised operating profits of €43.5 last year. The results for Spanish Airports revealed by the Development Minister showed there are only nine profitable airports in the country, with Alicante well ahead of second place Palma de Mallorca Airport which made €37.8 million.
Passenger capacity at Alicante Airport will almost double when work on the new terminal is completed next year. It will increase its annual capacity from 12.2 to 20 million travellers.
The nine Spanish Airports which made a profit in 2009 are: Alicante, Palma de Mallorca, Girona, Tenerife South, Malaga, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, Murcia San Javier and Bilbao. Lanzarote Arrecife and Seville Airports broke even.
The new terminal at Alicante Airport is now expected to be open at the end of next year.
The 333,500sqm terminal will be eight storeys high with 14 baggage reclaim belts, 96 check-in desk and 26 boarding gates. It will enable the annual capacity of the airport to be increased from 12.2 to 20 million passengers.
Ryanair has announced new routes from Alicante El Altet Airport to the Spanish cities Seville and Valladolid, Venice, Altenburg in Germany, Krakow in Poland, and Smàland and Stockholm in Sweden.
Nine new planes will be based in Alicante and the new services are scheduled to start at the end of March 2010 with the Seville route operating on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.