Political instability in the Middle East and last month’s Operation Pillar of
Defense have caused serious damage to Israel’s tourism industry, and the full
impact is still unclear, Israel Hotel Association president Ami Federman said
Monday.
Speaking to a group of reporters ahead of the annual hoteliers
association conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Federman said: “The world is in
an economic crisis, the region is in a political crisis. In addition to this,
what’s happening in Syria is closer to us than what [happened in] Libya and
Tunisia and Egypt last year – Syria is very close. Also Operation Pillar
of Defense, which certainly had a dramatic influence that we still don’t see all
the results of.”
“All I can say is it doesn’t help tourism,” he
said.
Federman also said the Israeli election system, which drives
politicians to make all sorts of statements that aren’t popular in the world,
“don’t help tourism, to put it lightly.”
He called on the next prime
minister of Israel to appoint an effective tourism minister who can handle what
he said will be the difficult task of improving Israel’s image as a tourist
destination, and work to bring down the operating costs for hotels in
Israel.
Federman said that he expects there to be a 10 percent drop in
the number of hotel stays in Israel over 2013, as a result of the “crisis” he
said Israeli tourism has been facing since Operation Pillar of Defense
began.
Overall, he presented figures saying that Israeli hotel rooms had
a 66% occupancy rate in 2012, and that there was a total of 22.1 million hotel
stays in Israel in 2012 – a 1% rise over 2011.
Federman’s statement came
the same day that the Tourism Ministry announced that 2012 set a record for
tourism, with 3.5 million entries projected by the end of the year – 2% more
than 2011 – with an expected NIS 36 million in increased tourism
revenues.
Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov, who earlier this month was
taken off the Yisrael Beytenu list for the upcoming elections by party head
Avigdor Liberman, said that “these achievements are a reflection of the
intensive and professional work of the past three years, when tourism has become
a main engine for growth in the economy with a rise in revenues and the creation
of new jobs.”
“Making tourism a preferred national industry will
strengthen Israel in economy image and advocacy terms,” said Meseznikov, adding
that the US remains the largest source country, with 18% of all visitors,
followed closely by Russia.
Earlier this month, the ministry announced an
NIS 15m. plan to rehabilitate Israel’s image overseas following Operation Pillar
of Defense, including NIS 7m. to be spent in North America and NIS 8m. in
Russia.
This comes in addition to a NIS 300,000 campaign launched in
Israel this month to encourage local tourism in the South.
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