Tourism demand at two of the world's smallest island airports: part one – Easter Island

While there is no exact figure, it is safe to estimate that there are thousands of small island airports worldwide, ranging from major international hubs to small regional airstrips.

Those minor ones might handle a very small number of passengers annually, but their passengers still rightly demand a high level of service - which they are paying for, directly or indirectly.

When it is the indigenous population that is being catered to, those demands can be high, but they will almost certainly be exceeded when big buck-paying tourists are involved as well.

This report looks at two island airports, in the South Pacific and South Atlantic oceans respectively, where the needs of the local population and the diaspora are complicated by tourist demands.

In the first case, that tourist demand, a select and expensive one, has existed for some time; while in the second one, via an airport only inaugurated in 2016 and described by a journalist the following year as "the world's most useless airport", it has materialised at a higher rate than what was probably expected, putting some strain on limited tourist infrastructure on the ground and raising red flags about future demand.

In both cases the report puts forward tentative proposals for how the airports could be improved, some of which might be appropriate to other island airports, while considering to what extent the private sector might be attracted to these facilities.

This is part one of a two-part report.