Tourists flocking to Israel at record pace

Tourists from Singapore cover themselves with mud while bathing in the Dead Sea. Yossi Zamir/Flash 90/JTA

JERUSALEM – Israeli tour guide Yossi Weiss was leading two busloads of American Christian pilgrims on a tour of Jerusalem’s Old City when he noticed how difficult it was to move around.

The Jewish Quarter was crowded and busy as the group visited the Temple Mount, Robinson’s Arch, and other famous sites, observed Weiss, who recently was named chairman of the Israel Tour Guides Association.

It was one sign of the record year Israeli tourism is having.

Despite the hand-wringing over Israel’s image overseas, the political direction of the Jewish state, and the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, visitors are continuing to flock to Israel — more than ever.

In the first half of 2010, some 1.6 million tourists visited Israel, setting a new record, according to the Israeli Tourism Ministry. It constituted a 39 percent increase over the same period of 2009, which included the Gaza war, and a 10 percent increase from the first half of 2008, Israel’s previous record year for tourism.

“Israel is a sought-after tourism product,” said Oren Drori, senior deputy director general at the Tourism Ministry, adding that there is a wide gap between Israel’s political image and its actual image.

Despite the gains over last year, the number of visitors for 2010 is only slightly ahead of where the numbers were 10 years ago, before the start of the second Palestinian intifada, according to Ami Etgar, director general of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association.

Claiming that Israel can do better, Etgar said, “This is a country that every person in the world has a motivation to visit.”

Furthermore, the record numbers have not translated into equal gains for Israeli hotels because many of the tourists are day trippers visiting from Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, and Turkey, according to Eli Gonen, president of the Israel Hotel Association.

The numbers also include the passengers on cruises that dock in Haifa and Ashdod ports. For nearly a decade, cruise ships did not stop in Israel because of ongoing security issues, but they have returned in recent months, and bookings have increased for 2011.

“We are glad that people are coming to visit the country,” Gonen said. “We hope they will come again and stay longer.”

Industry experts attribute Israel’s tourism boom to several factors:

• Israel has changed its aviation policies to allow more airlines to land in the country, including charters and low-cost European carriers.

• The evangelical market is growing. Three-fourths of all visitors to Israel are non-Jewish, and 35 percent of those visitors define themselves as pilgrims, according to Drori.

• More Russians are coming, in part because Israel lifted the visa requirement for travelers from Russia in 2008. With the visa restriction now being lifted on Ukraine, the number of visitors from that country is expected to grow, too.

• Tourism traffic from Latin America, particularly Brazil, has risen dramatically. A new El Al route established earlier this year between Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo has helped bring more visitors from South America. “It’s a boom,” Pilgrim Tours’ operations manager Eduardo Kitay said of the agency’s Spanish and Latin American pilgrimage tours. Kitay says the agency is so busy, it may have to turn away groups at the end of the year and into early next year.

• New tourism markets, such as the Far East and Eastern Europe, have begun to send more travelers, while tourism from Germany, England, and France remain steady. North America remains the No. 1 source of tourists to Israel.

Tourism Ministry officials attribute their success in promoting Israel to implementation of the recommendations from a 2006 report by Ernst & Young on Israeli tourism. The report found that Israel has the potential to more than double the number of annual visitors, to between 4 million and 5 million per year, and the way to reach that point was to promote Israel’s attractions while minimizing any negative feelings associated with its political developments.

The study propelled the Tourism Ministry to develop “intensive, segmented, and focused” marketing and advertising campaigns to improve Israel’s image as a tourism destination while targeting specific audiences, Drori said. Over the past year, targeted advertising campaigns have run in the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Scandinavia, and Brazil, ministry officials said.

The manager of Tel Aviv-based Yarkon Tours, Joseph Mizrachi, says the main increase in bookings has come from Christian visitors. Jerusalem is the agency’s main destination, in addition to such Christian religious sites as the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), the Jordan River, the Mount of the Beatitudes, and Mount Tabor.

The surge in tourists also has benefited the Palestinian economy by sending visitors to the west bank cities of Bethlehem and Jericho. Though Israeli passport holders are barred by law from entering areas fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority, known as Area A, the Tourism Ministry recently allowed Israeli tour guides into Bethlehem in preparation for leading tours there, and Israel is considering easing restrictions on Israeli visits to Palestinian areas.

Weiss, of the Tour Guide Association, says August and September do not look very promising. The American market, which usually books well in advance, appears to be waiting until the last minute, he said, speculating that concerns about the economy could be the reason.

“It puts some uncertainty into the equation,” he said.

JTA