Europeans' vacations fueling airport's success

Lee County's airport is bucking the state trend on international travel.

While international travel to Florida has been flat for the past two years, traffic from other countries to Southwest Florida International Airport is on the rise.

So far this year, international travel through the airport is up nearly 17 percent. That's considerably more than domestic travel, which increased 1.6 percent.

And the international figures only count direct flights from Europe and Canada to Fort Myers. Some travelers counted as domestic might actually be international visitors who transferred planes in an American city.

The easy answer to the reason for the airport's success is that the euro is worth a lot more than the dollar right now.

"One of the major criteria in why statistics go up is currency exchange," said Nancy Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau.

However, travel from Europe to Lee County was down by an average of 9 percent through March of this year compared to last year, according to figures from the Bureau.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER, Daily News // Buy this photo

Maggie Duessel, right foreground, greets her daughter-in-law Francisca Pawek, grandson Philipp Pawek, 3, and son Julian Pawek at the international arrivals gate at Southwest Florida International Airport on Thursday. The Duessels prefer to use Southwest Florida for their international flights. Although the old terminal was familiar to them, it was also old and they find the new terminal more comfortable.

The real reason for the airport's success may lie in the marketing staff's efforts to lure more international airlines to Southwest Florida.

German airlines started flying non-stop into the Fort Myers airport in 1992, when LTU began adding flights twice weekly from Dusseldorf, Germany.

Condor came next in 2000 with one non-stop flight to Frankfurt, Germany.

However, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Condor stopped offering that service.

Soon after, airport officials decided to start an incentive program to entice more airlines to offer additional domestic and international non-stop flights to and from Fort Myers, said Carol Obermeier, senior manager of aviation market development at Southwest Florida International Airport.

Obermeier's department began by targeting the top 20 markets for travelers to Southwest Florida that did not have non-stop service. It offered airlines who serviced those cities 50 percent off landing fees, terminal fees and equipment charges to start a non-stop service to and from those cities. New domestic flights would receive the discount for 12 months and new international flights would get 24 months of incentives, Obermeier said.

Depending on the size of the carrier and the frequency of flights, the program could save airlines between $10,000 and $25,000 per month, she said.

"It really helps the carrier," Obermeier said. "It's very costly to start up a new service in a new city."

The program brought in non-stop flights to 10 new cities, including four international cities, she said.

LTU added a flight to Munich and Condor resumed its flights to Frankfurt. Flights were also added to Montreal and Toronto.

Since then, LTU decided to offer another flight to Dusseldorf, bringing its non-stop international flights to and from Germany to four per week.

Nikolaus Sebestyen, a former German resident who now lives in Punta Gorda, said he enjoys having more options when he books flights overseas.

Sebestyen, who also lives in Cape Cod, Mass., during the summer, said flights out of the Fort Myers airport are more convenient and usually cheaper than those out of Logan International Airport in Boston.

Sebestyen's friends also like to take advantage of the flights to visit the sunny climate, said his wife, Jane.

"We have had plenty of visitors, I'll tell you that," she said.

With an estimated 65,000 German homeowners in Southwest Florida, it's easy to see why tourism and airport officials targeted that area.

"They are filling the planes," Obermeier said.

Now, airport officials have their sights set on other countries. They expanded the incentive program to 40 cities and are working hard to get at least one non-stop flight to and from the United Kingdom, Obermeier said.

"The UK has always been a target and always has been on our wish list," she said.

The problem is convincing airlines that English travelers don't want to go to just Orlando, Obermeier said.

Several carriers from the UK for years have been successfully filling planes with people who want to go to Orlando, she said. But many of those travelers end up driving down to Southwest Florida, according to Visitor and Convention Bureau statistics, Obermeier said.

Getting more non-stop flights to service the airport not only gives travelers more choices and makes more money for the airport, it's good for all of Southwest Florida's economy, Hamilton said.

"We know that the airport and the flights are really the lifeblood for our visitors to get here from other countries," Hamilton said.

The Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau worked together on a marketing campaign to bring more German visitors to Southwest Florida.

"We would like to take that success to other places, but talking to other countries takes time," Hamilton said. "You have to show that there are numbers and a history of numbers that will use the service."