Cristina Hodgson
TWO of the world’s tourism giants, the Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair and MSC Cruises, the fourth-largest cruise company in the world, have intensified their commitment to Malaga for this summer season.
The ongoing pledge from both companies will see a significant increase in air routes and more stopovers from the Costa del Sol, confirming the upward trend that both companies expect tourism to take in 2022 despite the pandemic or the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Ryanair’s general manager for Spain and Portugal, Elena Cabrera, who was in Malaga yesterday, Thursday March 10, informed that the company will operate 79 direct routes in the summer season—which runs between the end of March and September—from Malaga airport.
Of these routes nine will be new and will see flights to: Aarhus, Agadir, Kaunas, Lanzarote, Paris (Beauvais airport), Turin, Riga, Stockholm (Arlanda airport) and Zagreb, with a total of 340 weekly frequencies.
“It is 14% more capacity compared to the summer of 2019 in Malaga, so we are growing above the data that existed before the pandemic,” Cabrera said.
Ryanair has been the leading airline at Malaga airport for more than a decade, where it has a base with 11 aircrafts. Between March 2022 and March 2023 Ryanair expects to exceed five million passengers on the Costa del Sol.
Additionally, the general manager of MSC Cruises in Spain, Fernando Pacheco, who also visited Malaga yesterday, has likewise specified the strong interest of this multinational in the area.
The cruise company plans to make 29 stopovers in Malaga this year, up from 19 stopovers in 2019.
“We have great expectations in Malaga this summer because the numbers have already been very positive this autumn,” Pacheco said.
Furthermore, Malaga will be an embarkation port for MSC Cruises during summer 2022.
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