Ministry of Tourism Presents: Farce in Delegation to USA | Israel Today

After a year and a half, the State of Israel was opened to vaccinated tourists a little over a week ago.

In recent days, we spoke with senior officials in the tourism, hotels, aviation and catering industries in order to understand whether the tourist traffic in Israel is noticeable, whether they come to hotels and restaurants and whether there is a significant increase in passenger traffic at Ben Gurion Airport.

Data from the Population Authority show that the number of tourists is very low in the first week of the outline for tourists to enter Israel - 14,700 tourists entered between November 1 and 8.

For comparison, before the Corona period, about 4.5 million tourists entered Israel a year, an average of more than 86,000 tourists a week, a gap of almost six times.

The first day of inbound tourism, reporter: Shimon Yaish // Photo: Moshe Ben Simhon

It is important to take into account that this is indeed the first week of the opening and in a difficult period, but the gaps are still very large and far from the potential that Israel has during this period.

We examined the steps taken by the Ministry of Tourism to promote the arrival of tourists to Israel, and we found that last week a delegation of five representatives from the Ministry of Tourism went to the United States, in order to promote tourism in Israel.

In addition to the director general of the ministry, Amir Halevi, and a representative who handles inbound tourism in Israel, the trip funded by public funds was also joined by the vice president of human resources, the committee chairman who works in the ministry's accounting departments, and the new vice president. In the USA.

We asked the Ministry of Tourism for an explanation as to why employees from the Human Resources and Accounting Department (chairman of the committee) left, why the chairman of the non-accountant committee of the Ministry of Tourism went on this trip, why they could not do the work remotely without using money Public to travel to the United States and what was their contribution to promoting tourism in Israel on this trip to the United States, but until the publication of the article, no response was received from the ministry.

We also asked what steps were taken to promote the arrival of foreign tourists to Israel, but even in this case no response was received until the article was published.

"No tourist traffic"

From our investigation, the passenger traffic at Ben Gurion Airport did not increase significantly, and the numbers are very similar to those in the weeks leading up to the opening of the sky to tourists. We prepared and waited, but the opening of the country does not really help to bring tourists, no one worked to bring them here and made the whole process cumbersome, "claimed a senior industry official, adding," Tourists from the US who want to get here get tangled up by entering documents online. Convenient, especially not for older people, and the worst thing - giving them exactly 24 hours to finish the whole process, they are not enough, and it is a very short time window that puts them under pressure. This is a process where they are supposed to get approval back, They did not come to Israel. "

Tourism officials explained why there are almost no tourists in Israel: "The State of Israel was opened to tourists very late. Long before us, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and many neighboring countries were opened, and most of the world's tourism providers moved to work with them."