By Maryann Batlle
As of this month, travelers can fly year-round from Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers to San Juan, Puerto Rico, in about three hours on a direct commercial flight.
Beach hoppers probably are rejoicing. Local business leaders definitely are.
That’s because the entire region will soar as high as its airports do, said Eric E. Berglund, executive director of the Southwest Florida Economic Development Alliance.
“The busier and healthier your airport is, the better your regional economy is going to be,” Berglund said.
The airport’s solid offering of direct domestic and international flights is a boon for the regional economy, he said, because people and goods can move faster between Southwest Florida and elsewhere.
“Businesses compete in a global environment,” Berglund said. “Typical travelers don’t want to connect through hubs, because it becomes a time burden.”
RSW, what the Fort Myers airport is known by, has helped attract travelers to the area, with 16 consecutive months of passenger growth.“Last year was a good return to normalcy,” said Bob Ball, executive director of the Lee County Port Authority, which runs the airport. “But this year, I think was record breaking for all of the airports in Southwest Florida.”
RSW’s growth is part of a larger trend in the threecounty region of Lee, Collier and Charlotte, which is experiencing more tourism, increased single-family home sales and impressive new home development. And the airport is opening up the region to more areas.
RSW provides nonstop service to 47 locales around the world. And the list is growing.
Weekly flights from Fort Myers to Cancun, Mexico are expected to debut in October.
Most of the people who visit Lee County are from theU.S., but interna tional markets are growing, with particular interest from Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom, according to county tourismreports.
RSW already has direct flights to Germany and Canada. Air Berlin carries passengers between Fort Myers and Düsseldorf, Germany.
Air Canada doubled the number of flights it offers to and from Toronto in the summer, from two to four a week.
RSW has an air service development team whose job it is to market the area and bring the airport more routes.
“They are constantly talking to new airlines,” said Barbara- Anne Urrutia, a spokeswoman for the Lee County Port Authority.
The United Kingdom “is always on the list of markets,” she said, but there is nothing to announce yet.
Almost all domestic carriers fly in and out of Fort Myers, and their planes are getting bigger, which is contributing to RSW’s growth, Ball said.
“The airlines are managing our seasonal nature by increasing the size of the airplanes,” Ball said.
RSW served more than 7.9 million passengers in 2014. Last March alone, 1.1 million people traveled through RSW, the highest passenger traffic number ever recorded in the airport’s 32 years.
That post-recession rebound is seen throughout the region, particularly in Lee, Collier and Charlotte. All three counties are posting healthier tourism figures lately.
Collier’s bed tax revenues were up 17.3 percent in January year-over-year to nearly $3 million, from $2.6 million. Lee County’s revenues rose a record 36.9 percent to about $4.3 million, from $3.2 million.
In Charlotte C ounty, Punta Gorda Airport hosted 625,078 passengers in 2014, an 88 percent spike from the prior year, thanks in largepart to flights from discount airline Allegiant. Tourism tax revenue was up in that county by 21.8 percent, to $575,071, between October and January, according to the Charlotte Harbor Visitor & Convention Bureau.
More people are choosing to put down roots in the trio of counties, too, spurring once sputtering housingmarkets.
The number of residents living in Lee, Collier and Charlotte is projected to increase at least for the next 30 years.
Lee County’s population is projected to grow an average of 1.8 percent per year; Collier County at 1.4 percent per year; Charlotte County at 0.8 percent per year, according toaquarterly FloridaGulf Coast University report released in April.
Lee is expected to reach more than 1 million residents by 2040.
Sales of existing singlefamily homes for Southwest Florida’s three coastal counties were up 20 percent in March over last year, the FGCU report states.
A total of 2,239 singlefamily homes were sold in Charlotte, Lee and Collier in March, the report found. Median home prices were also up in all three counties, according to the FGCU report.
Adding to Southwest Florida’s and RSW’s economic potential is a $110 million road project that linked the airport to Interstate 75, said Ball.
The public loves having a traffic-light-free way of getting in and out of RSW, he said.
“And so do the (airport) employees because it saves time,” Ball said.
The direct connection between I-75 and airport is another valuable economic driver because it keeps people and freight moving smoothly, said Berglund.
“The more of those (transportation) assets you have in the mix, the more competitive our region becomes,” he said.
And RSW is looking inward for ways to meet the needs of Southwest Florida residents, visitors and businesses.
The port authority has a 20-year master plan filled with proposed RSW upgrades that are in varied stages of development. The plan includes a more than $300 million second runway and a $50 million new air traffic control tower.
Berglund said he plans to meet with airport officials within the next two weeks to discuss how his economic development group can help market the airport and its expansive vision for the future.
“We’re well positioned to capitalize on all of that,” Berglund said.
RSW served more than 7.9 million passengers in 2014.