The comments came during a CIAL online stakeholder meeting yesterday, where chief executive Justin Watson responded to questions submitted by members of the public.
When asked about Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism’s joint statement rejecting the Tarras project, Mr Watson said the airport "isn’t just for Queenstown and Wānaka, and it isn’t just for visitors".
"The majority of the passengers that come through Christchurch Airport, for example, are residents and people visiting friends and family and people travelling overseas to see friends and go on holiday themselves.
"So the view that it’s just a visitor airport is not really correct.
"We have to look at the entire passenger flows and we know that Central Otago is a significantly growing region with more population going in there."
Last month, Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism said an airport at Tarras would "drive an increase in visitor numbers to the region on a scale never seen before", and went against "the new regenerative tourism approach in the Southern Lakes".
Mr Watson said CIAL was "really supportive" of the view that tourism needed to become more regenerative, and projects such as a planned 300ha solar farm in Christchurch and a "hydrogen consortium" partnership with Airbus and Air New Zealand were indicative of the organisation’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions.
When asked how much money CIAL had spent annually on the Tarras Airport proposal, Mr Watson said $50million had been spent on land, but did not elaborate on any additional costs.
"That investment allows us now to further explore that site — its limitations, its opportunities, its challenges — and to see whether it ultimately stacks up," he said.
"I want to continue to reinforce that no decisions have been made."
In response to a question about when Christchurch ratepayers could expect to see a "proper business plan", Mr Watson said this was still a work in progress.
"There will be a full business case developed for this and we’ve made that commitment to our shareholders.
"That’s the process we’re about to embark on now, is to get a really strong base of data, information, feedback ... so we can ... really objectively look at that with a view to saying, does this make sense on all those levels that I know people are interested in?"
