I think that there is evidence that inbound tourism into Cardiff Airport from Europe is doing quite well. There are quite strong Family links between Wales and Italy - yes they produce and sell the ice cream. And there are regular sporting links between the two nations. Overall, the deal is to base two E195s in Cardiff, and to be viable they will be a mixture of what works - business, inbound and outbound tourism. Flybe rightly will make the decisions.
If the wealthy Welsh are to holiday abroad, and they are, then it is clearly in the interests of the WG that they fly, contributing some income to Welsh coffers, than from an English airport.
This sums it up for me.
CWL is predominantly used to fly the Welsh on their holidays, there's no hiding that and CWL has always done well out of that. But as Zoomboy says, there is evidence of inbound tourism to Wales. It's been said that many Spanish people use the Vueling routes, so they aren't just there to fly the Welsh to Spain.
I think Flybe will certainly do the same. Not all of their routes are holiday routes taking people away. Routes to Italy and Germany will attract inbound tourism.
Lastly, regardless of who is flying where and why, the more passengers means more Airlines, needing more crew, need more check-in staff and loaders, cleaners, security agents etc etc. It also means those jobs don't go to BRS