The Ministry of Tourism is considering ending the grant program for companies landing at Ramon Airport, Israel Hayom has learned. As part of the program, each airline landing at the southern airport received 60 euros for each passenger. The goal was to reduce the cost of the flight ticket, thereby encouraging flights to Eilat from various countries as part of the efforts to increase tourism to Israel.
But it turns out that there was a loophole in the program that made the whole thing not so lucrative for the state. Many tourists purchased the discounted tickets and landed in Eilat, but instead of enjoying the resorts and hotels in the Israeli city, they boarded a bus to the border crossings and crossed to Aqaba and Sinai - where they spent most of their vacation days, and sometimes all of them. The reason: Eilat is considered a more expensive destination in the region.
The Eilat municipality does not like the idea of stopping the program and calls on the Ministry of Tourism to continue. "I spoke with Minister Haim Katz and wrote to him on the matter," said Eilat Mayor Eli Lankri, "I believe that he will make the right decision to continue and even increase the encouragement of airlines and incoming tourism to Eilat, as is done with our neighbors and in many other places."
According to him, "Eilat has great potential for foreign tourism. The state invested NIS 2 billion in the construction of Ramon International Airport, among other things, in order to realize this potential.
Lankri in the Knesset, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"Already in the first year of Ramon's operation, 2019, during the winter alone, more than 600,<> overnight stays by tourists from abroad were recorded in Eilat hotels, and several hundred thousand more in hostels and Airbnbs, and more."
Lankri admits that some tourists cross the border, "but they are relatively few and make up no more than 13 percent." He adds: "It's happening both the other way around and all over the world. We must not give up on foreign tourism to Eilat, because this could be a serious mistake and another serious blow to the city, which is still recovering from the coronavirus crisis and the closure of Sde Dov. What is needed is actually to increase and increase incoming tourism. This is a clear economic feasibility for both the state and the city, contributing to GDP and state tax revenues. An investment of 60 euros in a tourist yields a contribution of about 1,200 euros to the country's GDP."
Ramon began to recover
As mentioned, Ramon Airport opened just before the coronavirus. Even before the outbreak of the epidemic, quite a few international flights left it at attractive prices, which caused even residents from the center of the country to travel abroad from there. During the pandemic, the new port stood almost deserted. A few flights, mostly domestic, took off. Over the past year, as the pandemic has waned, more and more international flights, especially by low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and Wizzair, have operated through it.
Ramon Airport, photo: Yehuda Ben Yattach
Following the grant program, government funding served as a safety net for airlines, flights from Eilat were significantly cheaper, and they could fill the planes even when leaving Ramon with Israelis interested in taking off from Eilat to destinations around the world. In recent months, direct flights have been operated from Eilat to Paris, Rome, Vienna, Krakow, Brussels and more. It now appears that with the decision made by the Ministry of Tourism, these flights will also be stopped, if there is no last-minute change.
Sinai beaches, photo: AP
Sources familiar with the matter detail a variety of options for continuing or changing the program. One of them was that vacationers would purchase vacation packages that included accommodation in Eilat. The airlines were not willing to take part in the matter. There they did not want, and some would rightly say, to discriminate between passengers. They demanded payment for every passenger who entered Israel, regardless of the package he purchased, his origin or the passport he presented. In other words, the foreign airlines received the same payment for Israelis flying to Israel.
The question now is what the Ministry of Tourism will decide, and whether it is precisely towards the summer months – the peak season of the southern tourist city – that tourists who considered spending time in Israel will turn around.
The Ministry of Tourism said: "The matter is under review."
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