Spanish airport passenger numbers down

Year on year passenger traffic through the airports operated in Spain by national holding company Aena are showing a massive 9.3% drop for the year to the end of October. For a country where tourism forms almost 10% of the economy these figures make bleak reading for what has been a battered sector this summer.

One bright spot is the performace of Madrids Barajas airport which, for the second month in a row, increased the number of passengers passing through its 4 terminals.

Madrid airport Hotels – Read before you choose

Each week we receive a very full virtual mailbag relating to choosing a Hotel in Madrid. This week we want to concentrate on Madrid airport hotels and explain honestly the pitfalls with blindly reserving online. Who wants to stay on the Madrid airport industrial estate?

Location

Its easy to say that the Madrid airport hotels are all in the same area but its not true. Yes they all share the same postcode but thats about it. In fact some Barajas airport hotels are actually in the Cargo area or next to a Motorway!

Services

The only service that a Hotel can offer thats important for a 24hr stay is the complimentary airport shuttle bus apart from that accomodation wise things are pretty much the same. Yes, theres the difference between the Hilton and the Holiday Inn but I think we’re all accostomed to the differing levels of service and number of “stars”.

What do we recomend?

Of the 60 plus  hotels proporting to be Madrid airport hotels there are only THREE that are worth considering. The only hotels for Madrid airport we believe to be worthwhile for your stay are those that:

• Are located in Barajas village – This village has a large number of restaurants, bars, shops and cafes as well as a beautiful square or plaza so you are not restricted to the hotel. The metro can take you into the center of the city in less than 20 minutes so you have the option of eating out in Madrid then returning to the hotel before an early flight the next day.
• Offer a shuttle bus – Whilst Barajas village offers a one stop metro connection to the airport in the event that your shuttle bus has gone astray the benefit of a Madrid airport hotel with a shuttle bus of its own is obvious. No heaving around your luggage and no trying to find the hotel!!! 

What hotels then?

Meeting the previous conditions the list of recomended Madrid airport hotels can be whittled down to just three:

• Tach by ClementHotels – One of the most modern and comfortable hotels in Barajas village
• Clement Barajas – This is the forerunner of the above and offers the same benefits
• Tryp Alameda Aeropuerto – A large hotel and ideal for groups from an established Hotel chain

There is a cheaper option in Barajas although it comes with one drawback, namely, You must telephone the Hostal directly to arrange the Shuttle service before you travel. Hostal Viky

We strongly don’t recomend
Theres nothing worse than geeting stuck in a bad Madrid airport hotel so heres a list of those hotels to avoid!

• The Madrid airport Hilton – Its in the middle of an industrial estate
• Tryp Alameda aeropuerto – In a somewhat rough neighbourhood
• Melia Barajas – As per Tryp Alameda
• Tryp Diana – As per Tryp Alameda
• Auditorium Madrid – Its around 30 minutes from the airport and next to one of Spains busiest motorways!!

We hope that this article in some way helps with your accomodation decisions and please fell free to coment on its usefullness!

Madrid to Alicante – The easy way

The author has had to make a series of trips between Madrid and Alicante recently and after having done the trip in the car and suffered with the tailbacks on the motorways full of holiday traffic decided it was time to find a better alternative. After all the sunny days in Spain are great…. only if you’re not cooking in your car!

The Madrid to Alicante guide on the information site lists the different methods of travel between the cities: Car, bus, train and plane however having been stuck in a car there was no way the author would change that for a bus so Rail or air were the only options available.

By train

Costs were around the 70€ mark seeing as the cheap tickets had already gone by the time one started looking. In actual fact it was suprising to see just how full the trains were due to the start of the Spanish childrens holidays. I guess thats what happens when you leave things until the last minute! Another suprise was the fact that what is normally a 3 hour train journey was being shown as almost 4 hours. A little bit of digging around and it was discovered that this is due to the construction of a parrallel high speed rail line causing restrictions on the existing line.

Ok, 70€ isn’t an expensive fare, 4 hours however is about the same travel time as in the car from door to door though. Once you’ve added in the time from home to Madrids Atocha or Chamartin train stations plus the travelling to the destination in Alicante the travel time rapidly approaches the 6 hour mark!!! Not what one was looking for! It is of course different if you are travelling city center to city center.

By Plane

Normally one wouldn’t have even considered flying but noticing that Ryanair now fly the route ones curiosity was stirred as to their possibility as an alternative travel option. Before I go on I want to make it clear that Ryanair are not everyones cup of tea due to:

1. No flexibility with travel changes
2. Charges for checked baggage
3. a miserly 10kg (22lb) cabin baggage allowance

and

4. Continuous sales pitches in flight

What they are however famed for are their rediculously low fares. So, buyer beware but if you can travel light and are thick skinned enough to ignore the sales pitch then you’ll be fine. Personally I recommend a good book!

As you can probably guess by now one ended up flying between Madrid and Alicante and for the stunning price of 33€ return travelling out on the Friday afternoon and back on the Sunday evening. Cost wise it couldn’t be beat! The other airlines operating the route had fares in excess of €120 so one “paid ones money and took ones chance” as the saying goes.

The flights

A word of caution for visitors from the USA about European skies in the summer: Air traffic control is about as effective as that in the NE corridor between Boston and New York when a winter storm blows in! Thats to say; its congested, and delays of between 20 minutes and an hour on the majority of departures are par for the course between 0700 and 2100.

Getting to Madrids Barajas airport was easy via the Metro and took no more than 20 minutes. Almost as long as it took to get from the airports metro station to the gate itself as with online check in with Ryanair means you can forget lining up at check in and pass directly through security with your printed boarding pass. Heres where things started to dissappoint.

Madrids airport is split into two parts Terminals 1, 2 & 3 are dingy antequated affairs whilst Iberias Terminal 4 is a glass monolith with everything a traveller could wish for. Ryanair of course use Terminal 1 as its the cheapest although one can hardly blame the airline for the airport policies. One of which appears to be extracting money from passenegers at every turn from the excessively over priced food outlets to the vending machines that start at a whopping €1,50 for a bottle of water! The other bug bear is that although all three terminals are connected (T4 stands off on its own and needs a bus transfer) at times different access gates are closed. This means your aircraft can park in between terminals 1 and 2 and you’ll be left with no option but to walk to T1 arrivals and then have to double back to to go to the Metro in T2… ahhh, the ways of the airports.

Once aboard the aircraft the flight time was given as 45 minutes and true to his word the Captain touched the aircraft down on Alicantes single runway at precisely the aforementioned time. A short wait and the buses had all passengers in Alicantes arrivals hall within 20 minutes. A note of caution: As with all airports Alicantes is located outside the city so you’ll be forced to take either a bus or taxi into the city. Taxis are around 20€ and the bus a great value 1,20€.

Authors thoughts

For a total of around 40€ and a travel time of 3 hours door to door flying to the coast for the weekend was certainly a lot more relaxing and economical than taking a car and would be so for 2 people travelling together. For larger groups and those with a lot of luggage a car is definately more cost effective although it could be said that when on holiday who wants to drive!