Holiday bookings made at a special Norwich Airport event have soared by more than a quarter compared to last year.
Around 1,000 people attended the 11th annual Travel Show at the airport, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Richard Pace, Managing Director of Norwich Airport, said: “Sales of holidays and flights on the day were up by 28% on the 2019 show and tour operators and airline representatives told us that trade was brisk.
“There appeared to be a sense of renewed customer confidence, perhaps attributable to the general election and the start of the new decade.
“This sentiment was echoed in the great feedback from the 21 stands, with representatives saying visitors were very engaged. By using Norwich Airport, passengers can start their holiday adventures from closer to home.”
Stands included TUI, Balkan Holidays, Newmarket Holidays, Transun Holidays, Wendy Wu, Classic Collection Holidays, Premier Holidays, Mercury Holidays, Titan Travel, Loganair, JTA and Palladium Hotel Group.
Earlier this month (January) Norwich Airport launched its annual destination guide – Fly Norwich 2020 offers 21 destinations in 10 countries, with 700 worldwide connections through Amsterdam, with up to four flights a day from Norwich to the Netherlands.
New for the summer season is the Antalya region on Turkey’s Turquoise Coast, plus two flights a week to Dalaman in Turkey. In addition, for the winter, there are twice-weekly flights to Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
Countries reached directly from Norwich Airport include Bulgaria (Bourgas), Cyprus (Paphos), Greece (Corfu, Crete, Rhodes), Italy (Bergamo), Netherlands (Amsterdam), Spain – Balearics (Ibiza, Majorca, Menorca), Spain – Canaries (Tenerife), and Turkey (Antalya and Dalaman).
In the UK there are daily flights to Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and regular services to Jersey, all with Loganair, and Guernsey in the Channel Islands, with Aurigny. There are also day trips and short breaks to Lapland.
Norwich Airport saw almost 544,000 passengers go through the terminal over 12 months to the end of March 2019.
Carriers operating from Norwich include TUI, KLM and Loganair.
Norwich Airport is owned and operated by Regional & City Airports (RCA), part of Rigby Group plc.
RCA is the UK’s leading regional airport operator in terms of scale and operation, and also owns and operates Bournemouth, Exeter, Norwich and Coventry airports, and holds management contracts for Blackpool, City of Derry and Solent airports.
In the year to March 2019, RCA welcomed 2.4m passengers and handled 227,000 flights, serving as gateway for the seven million people that live in the airports’ passenger catchment areas.
To download a copy of Fly Norwich 2020, click here.
