THE furore over the renaming of Teesside International Airport has had many people mystified for a number of reasons.

The first of those is what is wrong with the existing title? Not a lot, we are told, except from the point of view of marketing the area overseas. Teesside is not an attractive destination for people in places the new low-cost airline bmibaby is about to start flying to. It is not a recognisable name in Spain or Switzerland. That is understandable but the challenge is to find an alternative which meets the airport owners' marketing objectives while making sense to the local community. A difficult challenge indeed.

Durham-Tees Valley, the suggested new name, may conceivably make sense in Malaga or Geneva but it doesn't make sense here. Local people might have swallowed Tees Valley as it reflects the airport's geographical position between Darlington and Teesside, and the Tees Valley name has a little local - if somewhat grudging - currency. But Durham-Tees Valley is an entirely artificial creation. The marketing people may think the word Durham conjures up the city images of magnificent cathedral and quaint medieval streets but it is just as likely to be associated, in Spanish or Swiss minds at any rate, with grim coalfields and industrial decline.

It makes as much sense to associate the airport with North Yorkshire, where many of its users come from. It has a more positive image, certainly. How about Tees Valley and Dales Airport? The possibilities are endless, equally ludicrous and in the end, we suspect, bring us back to what we have now.

A further problem is that a decision on a name change is mired in local politics. Peel Airports, the new part-owners, are marketing-led. It just wants more people coming through the departure and arrival gates. The other owners, the local authorities including Durham and Darlington, want that too but also have other interests to serve. The effort to re-brand what is commonly thought of as Teesside and Darlington as the Tees Valley is chief among those.

This tension between commercial and political interests is responsible for the abomination of the Durham-Tees Valley name. If adopted, it would not successfully re-brand the airport. It would be confusing for overseas visitors and nonsensical for locals.

Branding is important, but what will make the airport more successful is not its name but the service it provides. Teesside will have to do.