As Europe's Cities Push Back on Tourists, Their Airports Keep Building

Airports serving some of Europe's most heavily visited destinations are expanding even as those same cities try to restrain the number of visitors they receive, according to a New York Times report published on 18 September. The paper names Venice, Barcelona and the Spanish island of Mallorca among the places where new terminal capacity sits awkwardly beside local measures aimed at limiting tourist numbers. Its conclusion is blunt: expansion can undermine the restraint, and can even enable more tourists to come.

The mechanics are not complicated. A longer runway or a larger terminal lowers the cost and effort of reaching a place, and airlines respond by adding seats. The paper's point is that this supply arrives regardless of what a city council, a residents' committee or a visitor levy is trying to achieve on the ground.

Sardinia is not named in the report, and this dispatch does not claim it is. But the island's own aviation geography makes the question a familiar one: Cagliari, Olbia and Alghero all depend on scheduled and seasonal air links, and the island's visitor economy is concentrated on the coast while the interior empties out.