Website targets independent travelers

The municipality joins forces with a private company to market Jerusalem.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
Jerusalem's old city 370 (photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
Jerusalem's old city 370
(photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
After years of courting expos, conferences and tour groups, the Jerusalem Municipality has decided to make a giant push to appeal to the independent tourist – albeit one armed with a smartphone. On Sunday, the municipality unveiled a NIS 2 million website, created in partnership with the Jerusalem Development Authority and a private website company. The website, iTravelJerusalem.com, purports to be a “one-stop shop” for travel destinations, including information about hotels, car rentals, flights, events, nightlife, restaurants and festivals.
In addition to smartphone access on the go, the website will be available at more than 40 tourism kiosks at hotels and highly trafficked tourist areas around the city. Nine of the kiosks are now installed at hotels in Jerusalem.
Ilanit Melchior, who is in charge of tourism for the Jerusalem Development Authority, says the website is part of an arsenal of tools to encourage independent travelers – families, singles and couples – to come to Jerusalem without a formal framework. The number of sporting events and festivals in the city has doubled in the past two years and they are drawing a record number of tourists to Israel, especially those who build their own itineraries around the events.
The tourism website’s flashy, visually rich interface is a far cry from the cluttered and awkward navigation of the municipality website. The new website is also built to have a more interactive userface, allowing people to leave reviews and recommendations.
(Full disclosure: The information about hot sites and trends is set up as articles that are sometimes featured as paid promotional content on the JPost website.)
Additionally, the JDA plans to install smartphone QR codes around the city, allowing tourists to use their phones to directly access information about area attractions.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat stressed the website as one of the most important tools for attracting more international visitors.
Over the past two years, visitors to Jerusalem have increased from 2 million to 3.5 million per year. The city wants to reach 10 million visitors a year by 2020.
Amos Fridlin, the marketing head for Ben Ben Group, which developed the website, admits that they face an uphill battle to market Jerusalem. “The foreign media does a bad job for Jerusalem,” he says. “In the best case scenario, when foreigners hear the world ‘Jerusalem’ they think of camels and churches. In the worst case, they think of bombs and terrorist attacks.”