AUSTRALIA. Macquarie Airports registered strong growth in passenger traffic at all its airports in January.
This was good news for Nuance, the duty free retailer at Sydney Airport, where international traffic increased by +7% compared to the same month last year and +9% for all traffic. This is the third consecutive month traffic has increased by +7% or more year-on-year at the airport.
The growth at Sydney can be put down to a combination of the Chinese New Year and increased trans-Tasman travel. Chinese travellers were up +23%, Taiwanese up +10% and travellers from Singapore were up +34%. However, Japanese and Korean travel was down -1% and -6% respectively. New Zealand travellers were up +14% year-on-year, UK travellers declined -5% and US travel was also down -5%.
Rome airports traffic was up +2.2% year-on-year. This was mainly due to a +47.1% increase in traffic at Ciampino airport while growth at Fiumcino remained static at -0.1%. Both airports were adversely affected by two days of industrial action in January.
Of the other Macquarie airports Birmingham and Bristol continue to post record traffic levels on the back of the introduction of low cost carriers. Birmingham experienced a +6.2% increase in traffic levels and Bristol a +15.4% increase in traffic levels.