I believe the newspaper report muddled itself in saying that BOH would see 3 mppa by next year. Clearly, that is just not going to happen. The government white paper suggests 3-4 mppa by 2030, although BOH's undoubted good luck (like BRS) in having in its hinterland a large number of comfortably-off, mainly older people with the means and will to travel may accelerate this growth when the economy gets back on track, whenever that may be.
When discussing the poulation of Bournemouth you really have to include all the towns that make up the conurbation here. According to the 2001 statistics the area has a population of 437,657.....Bristol had a population of 420,556 in 2001
Bournemouth/Poole
is listed as the second largest urban area in the government's South West region, an area that stretches from Gloucestershire through the former Avon area, Somerset and Devon to Cornwall/Scilly Isles and eastwards to include Wiltshire/Swindon and Bournemouth/Poole/Dorset.
Bristol is easily the largest urban area. Its municipal population of just over 400,000 is meaningless to an extent in that the city boundary has not expanded since the 1960s and another 'city' called South Gloucestershire lies on the northern and eastern edge of the official city of Bristol (you can't see the join). Add in bits of two other local authorities that impinge into the urban sprawl and this puts physical urban 'Bristol' at around 650,000 and Greater Bristol around 1 million (20% of the population of the government SW region which is the largest by area of the English regions - Greater Bristol also provides 25% of the GDP).
plus remember that Bournemouth probably has far more inbound potential than Bristol does
Some might challenge that assertion.
Bristol is one of Englands' eight core cities and one of the most successful economically with a large business market. Leisure-wise BRS sits near the World Heritage City of Bath, the Cotswolds, the Mendips, Exmoor, Forest of Dean and Bristol Channel coast, and Bristol itself is being discovered more and more as a tourist destination in its own right.
On crude population figures BOH should be seeing nearly half of BRS's passenger numbers but we all know that life is not that simple. If it was some airports would be doing better than they are and others worse.