Ryanair adds 12 new routes from Venice

Venice: Ryanair will introduce nine international and three domestic routes from its Italian base at Venice Marco Polo Airport in summer 2023.

The budget carrier will operate international services to Berlin, Birmingham, Bordeaux, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cologne, Dublin, Edinburgh and Manchester, as well as three domestic routes connecting to the southern Italian cities of Lamezia Terme, Alghero and Brindisi.

To service its new routes, the carrier also plans to add a fourth 737 aircraft to its Venice base, which, according to the carrier, represents a €92 million investment and will create 30 new jobs.

An additional 10 new routes are also planned for regional Treviso Airport, with flights to Cork, Crotone, Gdansk, Katowice, Marseille, Menorca, Santander, Tallinn, Toulouse and Zaragoza scheduled for the summer.

The 22 new routes will see the carrier operate a total of 85 routes and 850 weekly flights – a 70 per cent increase compared to 2019 – from Italy’s Veneto region, from airports in Venice, Treviso and Verona.

As part of the carrier’s expanded summer 2023 schedule, 17 existing routes from all three Veneto airports will also see flight frequency increases.

In a statement the carrier said it is “committed” to growing the region’s business travel and tourism sector, however ongoing investment is subject to the Venice City Council reconsidering plans to introduce a new tax of €2.5 for each departing passenger starting from April 2023.

Ryanair’s director of commercial, Jason McGuinness, urged the Municipality of Venice to be “reasonable” and stressed that its summer growth plans in Veneto are contingent on “the abolition of the new tax, which would ensure the region remains competitive”.

“Furthermore, we ask the Italian Government to immediately eliminate the municipal surcharge (equal to €6.5 for each departing passenger) on all Italian airports to ensure growth continues,” he added.

Camillo Bozzolo, sales and marketing aviation director at the SAVE Group, which operates Venice, Treviso and Verona airports, said: “The speed with which Ryanair was able to intercept the recovery of the post-pandemic market was crucial for the recovery of traffic in 2022, contributing over 30 per cent to the total 15 million passengers.”

Bozzolo stressed that Ryanair’s ongoing investment will be “strategic” to increase accessibility to the northeast Italian region, as well as provide a boost to the local economy.