Bristol Airport has joined forces with Destination Bristol for the third year in succession to promote the West of England to airlines from across the globe at World Routes, this year taking place in Durban, South Africa.

Since attending last year’s event in Chicago, Bristol Airport has secured services to 17 new destinations, contributing towards record passenger figures this summer. European low-cost specialist Wizz Air has also commenced operations at Bristol – the first time the airline has served the South West market. As well as exploring potential new routes, the Airport’s focus is also on growing services to established destinations with existing carriers as it targets seven million passengers in 2016.

Speaking to Routesonline ahead of travelling across to Durban, Pete Downes, head of aviation development, Bristol Airport, highlighted how our World and regional events help facilitate the airport’s growth strategy.

“Routes provides an invaluable opportunity to update airlines on the exciting developments at Bristol Airport. We’re proud to be flying the flag for the region, ensuring we deliver the increases in future connectivity that our growing regional economy needs,” he said.

Bristol Airport, like many others, has seen the value of working with local tourism experts to enhance their offer to airlines, helping bring the attractions of the area to life for airline executives, underlining the strong potential for inbound tourism.

“Since joining the Bristol Airport team at Routes back in 2013, we have been able to form an effective partnership in exploiting the potential for inbound visits to Bristol, Bath and the wider region. This event gives us unrivalled access to airlines and to airports at the ‘other end’ of a flight route allowing us to maximise the potential for marketing support and growing the visitor economy,” said Kathryn Davies, head of tourism, Destination Bristol.

Last month, passenger numbers at Bristol Airport topped three quarters of a million during a single calendar month for the first time, with a total of 768,587 passing through the terminal – up six per cent over the previous year.

Growth is the result of the enhanced flight and holiday programmes on offer this summer from the ‘big two’ tour operators – Thomas Cook and TUI Group (which operates the Thomson and First Choice brands) – as well as a raft of new services from scheduled airlines and increased load factors across all sectors.

Thomson Airways added a third aircraft to its Bristol-based fleet in May, opening up new destinations including Dubrovnik, Pula and Santorini, while Thomas Cook operates two Airbus A321s to a total of 20 destinations from the Airport. New easyJet flights to Bilbao, Isle of Man, Porto, Gibraltar, Lanzarote, Catania and Zante all commenced earlier this year. Wizz Air also entered the South West market for the first time in June, launching twice weekly flights to Katowice in Poland.

An enlarged departure lounge opened in July to help meet this growing demand, and work is already underway on a second major extension to the terminal building which will deliver significant improvements to the security search and arrivals areas next year.

According to Downes, inbound traffic also received a boost recently with the high profile opening of Banksy’s Dismaland in nearby Weston-super-Mare, while he expects The Rugby World Cup, which opened yesterday, is also expected to boost inbound passenger numbers this autumn.