You can’t use what isn’t being offered in the first place. Surely one of the basic rules of any successful business is to know your customers requirements?
It may come as a surprise to DTVA management that there are other countries in Europe to which people from Teesside might want to travel. There must be thousands like me who have no desire whatsoever to travel to Alicante on a frequent basis. Fine for the minority that do, but useless to everyone else.
I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t know of any open public consultation process that DTVA has ever used. If they did, it might provide a meaningful indication to operators and tour companies as to destinations where 2.7 million potential customers in the DTVA catchment area (DTV figs not mine) might want to travel if they were given any sort of choice in the matter.
Customers aren’t going to use their local airport, shops, theatre, etc. if the ‘owner’ doesn’t first of all find out what they want, and then do everything possible to provide at least some of it, safe in the knowledge that they’re at least using customer driven opinions.