Reus Airport's fastest growing in Spain with number of passengers.

Reus Airport has recorded for the month of July 267,694 passengers, 32.5% more than last year.

Elena Sunday - (Diari de Tarragona) 11/08/2009

Reus Airport has recorded for the month of July, the highest growth in passenger numbers across Spain, over the same period last year. While airports have lost on average 4.9% of passengers, Reus is the only growing, 32.5%, along with Santander (19.6%).
In many transactions, the Reus Airport is the third fastest growing, 19.7%, behind the Pyrenees of Huesca (52.4%) and Burgos (34.4%). At the state level, however, the transactions fell by 9.5% over July 2008.
These figures are part of a current slowdown in the airline industry. Spanish airports reported from January to July 2009, 11.5% fewer passengers and 12.5% fewer transactions over the same period last year, reflecting the global economic crisis. In contrast to these figures, the Reus Airport continues to grow.
The increase in passenger numbers and Reus airport operations has been ongoing since the launch of the operational base for Ryanair, last October. Since then,the Irish company has expanded its routes to the current 23.

Good news.

Viva Reus

and they say people are not going abroad for holidays.

How far is it from reus airport to salou? How much roughly in a taxi??
Going to salou on tuesday but dont have airport transfers!

About 10km depending on where you are stopping & 30 to 35 euros for a taxi. Good value for 3 or 4... not so good for one or two - consider the Plana Bus.

Reus airport has it's best summer ever, and the Costa Dorada has it's worst season in decades. How can this be? One way to explain this is, that the price you pay to come here is like a cut. Because between Ryanair and the hotels they brought the price down so far, the people that are actually walking the streets of Salou at the moment are not spending any money in local businesses, because they don't have any money.
Proof: before, nobody liked hotel food and went out to the restaurants to eat; now it's even cheaper to stay in the hotels (and all-inclusive) so if hotels spend less money on food now, automatically quality will go down even more!! But now people DO eat the hotel food. You don't have to agree with me, just go into Salou and ask any shopkeeper, restaurant owner, sales rep or travel rep.
All their sales are down by between 25 and 50%
Let's give Ryanair more of our tax money (over 3 million so far) so they can bring more people with very little to spend to come and laugh at us.
I'm being sarcastic now.
I hope this post will withstand Santy's delete button, because I think it deals with a big problem that we are all facing at the moment. Any ideas?
Jim, I can understand that mr. O'Leary is a godsent for you, but for many of us over here he will mean the end.

I think you will find that the "record" number of passengers includes all the Spanish people flying out of Reus . So there is no benefit to any business in the Costa Dorada area, other than Ryanair or Aena ,(the airport authority).Nice to see Ryanair has repaid Reus airport by cutting almost all UK winter flights.

I fully agree with you Shooter but winter Ryanair flights converted Salou into a winter destination and the bars and restaurants definitely did better.

I can only partially agree with you, Jim. Less than a handful of bars stay open in winter, so the few people that arrive have only a very limited choice. (if you share a pie with only two others you get a bigger piece)
More important is the reaction of Ryanair. Judging by their decision to stop most flights from Britain to Salou it must not have been so profitable to operate them in the winter (even with the help of our taxmoney)
One can assume that they make their money in the summer, and that help from the local government is to maintain the routes in winter, when obviously there are less travelers. Everybody over here thought (and hoped) that the impact on the local economy with the arrival of Ryanair would be big, but not even the Port Aventura Golf courses have attracted the clients they hoped for (flights might be "cheap" but bringing your clubs is bloody expensive)