Alex Robertson Textor

Some Updates

It's been a quiet few months but not so quiet that I can't make some claims. 

• I'm still writing for Gadling.

• I've written a few posts for Sunvil, on the Faroe Islands and Flores.

• I joined Instagram.

• I've fleshed out my Pinterest boards. Places I want to visit is the best of these. (But of course I'd say that.)

• I am writing a book. (And burying the lede.)

• I just created my first Vine post.

• I'm thinking a lot about destination branding.

• I'm traveling to Milan, Turin, Aosta, Valais, Copenhagen, Malmö/Lund, the Isles of Scilly, and Baku over the next eight weeks. For the second half of 2013 I'll be focused on family travel (Japan, Thailand, US), a road trip (South Dakota), and book research (Kazakhstan, Russia, Northern Cyprus, Spain).

• I've got some big ideas about co-branded collaborations. I'm hoping to get some of these off the ground by the end of the year.

• I remain in love with London.

Ryanair Gets More Domestic

Today Ryanair announced that from November on, they'll be flying four domestic routes between Madrid and Alicante, Palma, Santiago de Compostela, and Valencia. Ryanair has been amping up domestic flights within larger countries over the last several months. With these routes, I'm counting 18 domestic routes running or planned to run within Spain, including routes to the Canary Islands.

That's nothing compared to the 22 routes Ryanair runs or plans to run within Italy. Ryanair also flies 16 domestic routes within the UK, most of them to and from Derry or Belfast in Northern Ireland. The airline also maintains three domestic routes apiece in France and Germany.

I'm ready to say that this domestic route approach is turning into the key route map development of 2008 for Ryanair. I expected the airline to slowly but consistently open up additional destinations in places like Bulgaria, Ukraine, Israel, and Turkey over the course of the year. None of that has happened, at least not yet. Instead, we've got more and more domestic routes. In some markets, this approach to route development is clearly designed to provide an alternative to flailing local carriers; in France and Germany, the goal seems to be to simply mark territory, subtly hinting at what might happen if the airline decided to expand domestic routes more fully.

Ryanair's Domestic Italian Route Boost

As Alitalia disintegrates, Ryanair is expanding in Italy. The airline announced a slew of Italian domestic routes yesterday. From December, Ryanair will be flying between Forli and Alghero, Bari, Cagliari, Lamezia-Terme, Olbia, and Palermo. The Irish LCC already runs several domestic Italian routes; prior to this announcement, however, none of these flew in or out of Forli.