Our Travel Agent is a well respected local with many years experience and has in our opinion, great knowledge of what's going on within the industry. So if what he told us is based on his "own spare time informed judgement" or indeed information from within the industry I just don't know. However whilst we where in the Shop he did bring up our proposed Cruise on the system and whilst flights have been contracted from Newcastle and Manchester, Teesside was ommitted. We could of course book our own flights to Barcelona from Teesside separately from our Cruise Holiday but that would leave us out on a limb in the event of flight delays (ships won't wait) or god forbid, Airport closure.
Personnally. I have found that for many years local Travel Agents have had to be poked and cajoled into even looking at Teesside as a possibility.
I can remember being in Callers Pegasus Flight Desk in Stockton enquiring about flights to Toronto. The guy immediately suggested Newcastle / Amsterdam / Toronto. "What about Teesside" I said, after all it's only 6 miles from my house !!. "Oh yes we can have a look". We flew from Teesside !!. Even back then it almost seemed like there was a conspiracy against Teesside.