Ryanair condemns ticket tax will damage tourism
20-Oct-2008 |
Airline Code [RYR]
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Tags :UK, Ryanair
Ryanair condemned the Government’s discriminatory EUR10 ticket tax will damage the Irish tourism industry (when visitor numbers are already falling) and devastate Shannon where passengers and visitors are now facing a 100% rate of tax.
The Government should realise that they can’t tax the tourism industry out of recession, they need to stimulate it.
Ryanair confirmed it would be seeking an urgent meeting with the Minister for Transport, to outline the devastating consequences for Shannon Airport’s traffic of this regressive tourist tax which will more than double the average air fare paid by visitors to Shannon throughout the Winter months.
Ryanair, is not opposed to a travel tax in principle (to help the Irish economy weather the current recession) and explained that this measure will only hit less than 15% of Ryanair’s total passenger numbers, but called for the restructuring of this tourist tax and other measures to create even greater savings for the Government as follows:
1. Ryanair calls for the ticket tax to be extended to passenger traffic on ferries, in order to level the playing field between aircraft and ferry traffic.
2. Ryanair calls on the Government to change the regressive flat rate tax into a progressive percentage tax of the fare paid. This would raise the same amount of revenue, but with a higher proportion of tax paid by higher fare business and transatlantic passengers, and a lower amount of tax paid on low fares tickets bought by price sensitive, lower income passengers. It is entirely unjust that a business passenger travelling across the Atlantic paying a EUR3,000 air fare is paying the same EUR10 ticket tax as a EUR10 fare passenger travelling on a tight budget.
3. Ryanair calls for the Government owned DAA monopoly to reduce its passenger taxes by 50% per departing passenger in order to reduce the double taxation being faced by departing passengers at Dublin Airport. It is entirely unfair that passengers are being taxed twice at Dublin Airport, once by the Government’s airport monopoly for EUR15 a departing passenger and now a second time by the Government with this EUR10 ticket tax.
4. Ryanair also calls on the Government to dispense with this ticket tax altogether and avoid damage to Irish tourism and instead raise even more money by:
a. Scrapping the current absurd PSO subsidy scheme which will save EUR16m p.a.
b. Closing Failte Ireland, the tourism quango which has a budget of more than €150m annually, but doesn’t deliver one additional visitor to this country.
Ryanair confirmed that it will now enter into discussions with Shannon Airport about the future viability of its 2 million passenger base there. Whilst passenger numbers and fares are viable at Shannon during the Summer months, the vast majority of passengers flying to/from Shannon during the Winter months are loss making since they pay an average fare of less than EUR10, and so this devastating travel tax will more than double the air fares these visitors pay and will see Winter traffic collapse at Shannon Airport next year.
(C) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 20-Oct-08 For in-depth analysis of the low cost airline sector worldwide, subscribe now to the peerless Peanuts! Weekly
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Ryanair condemns ticket tax will damage tourism 
