Alicante-Elche Airport Targets German Market with 420,000 Seats for Peak Season

Alicante-Elche Airport has set its sights on the German market for the upcoming peak season. In 2024, Germans were the third largest group of international passengers at the Alicante terminal. With 1.085 million travellers, only the UK and the Netherlands surpassed Germany.

Thus, the four main airlines connecting with Germany will operate flights to 15 terminals. Approximately 420,000 seats have been scheduled for the peak season, distributed across 2,200 direct flights between Alicante and Germany.

Airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet, the two with the highest traffic at the Alicante-Elche Airport, will fly to various German cities during the summer, including Cologne, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Berlin, among others.

This was explained by the Alicante Provincial Tourism Board, whose representatives attended the ITB in Berlin on March 6th, one of Europe's most important tourism fairs, where the Valencian Community had its own stand for the first time since 2011.

There, the director of the board, José Mancebo, along with the president of the Provincial Council, Toni Pérez, held several meetings with industry professionals. Mancebo proudly highlighted the "excellent connectivity of Alicante-Elche Airport," offering links "with 15 German terminals, figures that drive us to continue focusing a large part of our promotional strategy on this market."

Pérez insists that this extensive offer "guarantees German travellers flexible and convenient options to discover the Costa Blanca." The Provincial Council points to the importance of this market due to "its economic stability and because it is one of the countries that travels the most in Europe per capita."

The board has focused on a work agenda with tour operators, agencies, and airlines, with its strategy centred on the Central European market: Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, as well as the Baltic countries. In this regard, Mancebo has announced that they have secured an agreement with the German tour operator Altours, one of the country's most important, to hold a meeting in Alicante next April.

At the ITB, the world's largest tourism fair, the Ministry of Tourism was also present with its own stand. The Minister, Marián Cano, stated that the "German tour operators we have met with confirm reasonably good expectations for 2025."

The head of the area has held various meetings, including one with Lufthansa City Center, the largest cooperation of independent travel agency franchises in the world, to explore the possible hosting of their annual convention in the Valencian Community.

Additionally, meetings have been scheduled with international tour operators such as Kensington Tours, a Canadian tour operator, and EasyJet Holidays, to explore potential collaborations in tourism promotion.