Criticality of a regional airport development to mitigate covid-19 economic effects

The current COVID-19 crisis is having major impact on businesses across the world. This Insight focusses on investment in transport infrastructure as one of the key tools to enforce employment, businesses afloat and to maintain the productive capacity of the economy as well as maintain, and possibly increase, the attractiveness as business location. The challenges associated with the delivery and operation of complex transport infrastructure projects in today's marketplace have been well documented in recent years. Decision making in planning and management of new transport infrastructure projects is complicated due to the different stakeholders involved in decision process, especially for restricted economic conditions and financing assumptions, where the project business plan performance is strongly related to regional development prospects. The paper provides an evaluation framework based on an ex-ante assessment framework of a new airport economic impact concentration to business ecosystem on one hand and the diversity of economic impact to business ecosystem on the other in the post COVID-19 era. The approach is essential to provide key messages to national governments, decision makers and stakeholders regarding the contribution of an airport investment towards regional economic development in terms of contribution to business ecosystem after COVID-19 pandemic. The case study adopted to illustrate the application of this methodology is a new regional airport with high seasonal traffic characteristics on the island of Crete in Greece, one of the most attractive tourist destinations in South-east Mediterranean.