**6. Conclusions**

The results provide the evidence that the development of a new airport will spur economic growth by generating additional income through the construction period and through the

The Mediterranean region is one of the most attractive tourism destinations in the world, accounting for approximately one third of the world ITA (423.7 million ITA in 2013) according to Ref. [31]. For decades, the Mediterranean destinations have provided, along with other

operation through increased tourism demand.

154 Mobilities, Tourism and Travel Behavior - Contexts and Boundaries

**5.3. Economic footprint in Mediterranean tourist destinations**

**Figure 4.** Contribution of existing and new airport to regional GDP (2010 prices) (source: [21]).

**Figure 5.** % Contribution of airports in North Mediterranean countries to GDP (2013) (source: [34]).

Tourism industry performance is determined from the demand it generates for products and services and plays significant role in the regional development of tourist destinations, contributing to income growth and sustainable socioeconomic development. Due to the high interaction of air transport and tourism industry, the air transport sector is considered to be extremely a crucial driver of socioeconomic development for these tourist destinations.

The competitive environment and globalisation of tourism and air transport business sectors result in the essential manner that strategic and business planning settles regional targets in order to achieve higher outputs. A key success factor is to define a clear, compact and coherent strategy appropriate to support decisions based on the commercialisation of the necessary improvements in tourism and air transport industry. Therefore, the quantification of the economic effects caused by air transport sector is an essential task to support decision and policies.

Key benefit of this chapter is that it presents the methodological framework to quantify the wider economic outputs of air transport in tourist destinations, appropriate for planners, managers and decision-makers to apply in relevant cases. The case studies' findings improve understanding of the close interactions of air transport and economy and which are the determinants that affect the contribution of air transport economic development of tourist destinations and especially remote tourist destinations. The application results provide a strong evidence of the existence of this long run cointegrating relationship among economic development and air transport sector.
