Originally Posted by Sober Lark
In a recessionary economy don't people cut down on travel and save instead? I'd imagine the cost of flying is one of the smallest elements of the total cost of going away for a short holiday so even if the DAA actually paid people to fly it probably wouldn't make any difference to the numbers that travel through their airports.
Originally Posted by Shamrogue
I'm with sober lark,
The direct Gov tax is bog all to do with airline growth. Airport charges may have a bigger effect, since they'll be directly in the airfare and are perhaps more substantial.
Airlines will make more from selling ancillary services than the gov tax also. So should the airlines sell their hotels etc nett in order to enhance the tourist proposition (I say this with a smile).
Overall, the European economy is under pressure. If you plan a trip, it'll go something like €200.00 airfare, €100 a night hotel, €50.00 a night dinner, €20.00 visiting attractions etc etc etc. It's the overall spend. And it's widely shown people are opting for 1 holiday versus 2 holidays.
Perhaps the simplest route is to try and develope new markets and tap clients we're not seeing.
Cheerio Shamrogue
Just because the government says so, doesn't make it true. Right now we're competing for inbound tourism more than ever before, so to tax people just to visit this island is a joke. We should be doing everything possible to get people to visit here, not taxing them.
This is just 1 barrier though, but a straightforward one that the government could remove. The other is the high airport charges, particularly at Dublin. New route schemes are grand, but more needs to be done for airlines already serving Irish airports in order to allow them to increase capacity.
Taxing tourists and charging airlines through the roof to land here is doing nothing to increase passenger numbers or inbound tourism. The sooner idiots like Leo Varadkar realise this the better.