While Venice installs turnstiles, Barcelona protests cruise ships, and Santorini puts limits on daily visitors, Corsica has decided to try something completely different. They aren't building walls; they are buying airline seats. Hundreds of thousands of them.
It is a move we haven't really seen before in Europe. The Collectivité de Corse, the island's local government, is putting up €2.5 million a year to secure 250,000 guaranteed airline seats annually for the next four years. The idea is simple but smart. They want to flood the island with visitors in January and February when the hotels are empty and the beaches are quiet, rather than letting 73% of tourists cram themselves into July and August.
How It Actually Works
After putting the contracts out for bid, two airlines picked up the slack. Volotea is handling nine low-season routes from French cities like Bordeaux, Nantes, and Strasbourg. Then you have Air Corsica, which will fly international routes from Brussels-Charleroi and Rome starting in April 2026.
The ticket prices are almost hard to believe. We are talking about one-way fares of €75, €46, or even €38. As one local official noted, those prices simply didn't exist for winter travel to the Mediterranean before this.
The passenger pays that ultra-low fare, and the Corsican taxpayer covers the gap between that price and the actual cost of operating the flight. In exchange, the airlines promise to fly the route whether the plane is full or not.
The Numbers behind the Gamble
Corsican leaders are taking a big swing here, but they have done the math. They are looking at a total investment of €10 million over four years. In return, they expect more than €418 million in tourist spending and over 7 million additional overnight stays.
Gilles Simeoni, the president of the CDC, calls it the most ambitious project of its kind ever attempted in Europe. It makes sense when you realize tourism makes up a huge chunk of Corsica's economy. The current model leaves guides, restaurants, and hotels with nothing to do for eight months of the year, only for everything to collapse under the pressure of crowds in the summer.
Profits Infinitely Greater Than the Risks
Of course, not everyone thinks this is a slam dunk. The scheme is walking a bit of a legal tightrope. Since the government is directly subsidizing specific airlines, competitors could argue it distorts the market. Brussels has already started asking questions about similar, though much smaller, subsidies in Sardinia and Scotland.
Simeoni doesn't seem fazed. He points out that because this is innovative, there isn't really a legal precedent yet. He prefers to move forward because he believes the economic and social benefits far outweigh the risks. If it works, they are already planning a second phase with flights from London, Munich, Frankfurt, Geneva, and Milan.
From Overtourism Nightmare to Year-Round Paradise?
The first flights took off on November 1, 2025, and the early numbers are impressive. Planes on the Bordeaux–Figari route are over 85% full during what used to be the dead season. Hotels in Porto-Vecchio are seeing their best January bookings in twenty years.
We will find out in the coming months if Corsica has invented the off-season tourism future or just given EU regulators a reason to crack down on state aid.
For now, one thing is clear. While the rest of the Mediterranean tries to push tourists away, Corsica is paying them to come. They just have to arrive when the island can actually breathe. And for a €38 flight in February? That is an offer that is hard to refuse.
