A growing summer for the North-East airport hub: +5%

The key points

• The additional node
• Venezia
• Treviso and Verona

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For the 2024 summer season, which will start on Sunday 31 March and end on Saturday 26 October, the prospects for the three airports of the North-East airport hub – Venice, Treviso, Verona – are of a very high demand for national and international flights: the overall growth in the number of passengers is expected to be 5% compared to the 2023 summer season. Around 13 million passengers in total are expected from April to October, with a definitive recovery compared to 2019 when, in the same period, the three airports had managed 12 .7 million passengers.

This is the data that emerged from the “Summer 2024” edition of the Venice/Verona Airport Workshop, a B2B event organized on 20 and 21 March, dedicated to professionals for a comparison on the demand/supply of travel at Veneto airports: for the airport hub a particularly positive meeting, which announces a strong demand for travel for the upcoming summer season and confirms the relaunch of traffic volumes, growing once more compared to 2023 and also to 2019 levels.

The additional node

The meetings recorded a large turnout, welcoming a total of 175 travel agents, who had the opportunity to hold dedicated meetings with 65 operators, including airlines, tourism bodies and tour operators. A periodic opportunity that aims to bring together the main players in the sector in a single context, which translates into travel proposals tailored for the general public.

The growth – it emerged from the work – might be even higher, if the main low-cost carriers had not stopped their development programs at Marco Polo: the choice is traced back to the desire of the Municipality of Venice to introduce the new surcharge from May 2023 of 2.50 euros for each passenger departing from the airport. For example, following the introduction of the new addition, the low-cost carriers Ryanair and Wizz Air, which had opened their bases at Marco Polo in 2022 with strong development prospects, literally blocked their growth at the airport.

Venezia

In detail, Venice’s “Marco Polo” airport confirms its role as the third national intercontinental gateway, further strengthened by the liveliness of the North American market which reconfirms summer connections to Atlanta, Chicago, New York JFK, New York Newark, Philadelphia, Montreal and Toronto. Towards the Middle East, Qatar Airways will resume its daily connection with Doha in June, which was suspended during the pandemic. The flight adds to the consolidated presence of Emirates, which operates daily flights to Dubai with Boeing 777s equipped with a first class cabin. In the Mediterranean area, EL AL will be offering connections with Tel Aviv four times a week from March 31st, which will become five in the summer peak. Furthermore, Air Cairo, a carrier of the Egyptair group, connects Venice with Sharm El-Sheik every Sunday. Furthermore, from May the Icelandic carrier PLAY resumes operating flights to Reykjavik for the second summer season and from June SunExpress reactivates connections to Izmir, both lines operate twice a week.