Menorca Airport is situated approximately 4.5 kilometres to the south-west of Mahon which is a large port and the the island’s capital.

It is primarily a tourist airport with a large number of charter flights, especially during the summer. Most of the traffic passing through the airport is international, with the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy accounting for the greatest number of passengers. Nationally, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca and Madrid are the busiest destinations.

For the size of the Island, Menorca is a busy airport and handled 2,605,938 passengers and 31,804 flights in 2008. 61% of all passengers arriving at the airport are International travellers with the remainder made up of Inter-Balearic Island passenger traffic.

Like many of Spain’s airports the airport at Menorca gets extremely busy over the summer months when it deals with around 90% of its annual passenger traffic. You can more or less get anywhere in Menorca within an hour so transfers from the airport should not be too long and tedious.

Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade, Miguel Sebastian, today expressed hope that the year 2009 tourism “is not as black as some say” and to restore confidence in the sector.

“We hope to regain the confidence and financial situation of the banking system and families,” the minister stressed during the closing Futuralia sustainability forum, organized by the Tourism Bureau, stressing that if the low Euribor and reduces uncertainty, Spaniards may have more “joy” in tourist spending.

Sebastian stressed that the global economic crisis will affect the Spanish tourist industry because the bulk of foreign tourists come from the major European economies in crisis, Germany, UK and France.

Therefore encouraged to make the Spanish national tourism. “Making tourism in Spain, creating jobs and activity and combat the crisis,” he noted, recalling that there is a chance “to go skiing in the Pyrenees and Sierra Nevada instead of the Alps” and emphasizing the existence of places like the Canaries and “number of rural tourism sites that many people do not know.” “I’m not going to leave the country,” he noted, referring to spend Christmas in Spain.

During the closing speech of the Forum, Sebastian stressed that tourism can and should be “a lever to get out” sooner rather than later the crisis “and stressed that Spain has its own tourism potential source of wealth.”

“The tourism income in Spain is equivalent to the production of two million barrels of oil per day,” said the minister, so it is vital to boost the sector, he stressed, highlighting the importance of implementing the Plan Horizon 2020 regarding sustainability.

Finally, the minister highlighted a number of initiatives aimed at giving impetus to the sector, such as the Plan Renove of tourist infrastructure, which involves an allocation of 400 million euros to improve the quality and sustainability of the facilities of the companies.