Busiest ever start to the summer
The growing interest in travelling to and from Denmark resulted in a substantial 9% increase in passenger numbers at Copenhagen Airport in June, making it the busiest ever start to the summer. In the first six months of the year, passenger numbers grew by 11% year on year to 13.7 million. Among the travel destinations Spain stood out with 30% growth this year.
An unusually busy first half year at Copenhagen Airport with total passenger growth of 11% ended with the first holiday month as no exception.
"We have had an unusually busy start to the summer period, and on several days in June we saw for the first time more than 100,000 passengers pass through the terminals. The total number of passengers was 2,757,538 million, representing a growth rate of 9% year on year, resulting at the busiest ever start to the summer at Copenhagen Airport," said Copenhagen Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye
One of the favourite destinations is Spain with a 30% increase in passenger numbers in the first six months of the year.
"We can see that passengers have really taken advantage of the additional capacity offered by the airlines on routes to Spain. Overall, the number of seats available exceeded 298,000, representing a year-on-year increase of 31%; and a corresponding growth was seen in passenger numbers.
That is a good example of how more flights to a destination also make more passengers choose to travel to that destination," said Woldbye.
This is also recorded by Statistics Denmark in the form of a 46% increase in Spanish bed nights in Copenhagen in the first five months of the year.
So a significant part of the year's 11% growth in Copenhagen Airport has been generated by an increase in the number of foreign tourists choosing Denmark as their destination because of the many new routes in recent years. In the first quarter of 2016 alone, 27.2% more tourists travelled to Denmark via Copenhagen Airport compared with the same period of last year.
Not only international traffic is growing. Domestic traffic has also taken off in 2016, showing accumulated growth of 7% in the first six months of the year. The growth rate for domestic traffic in June was 4.7%.