And they just keep rolling in…(could it be Israel’s latest tourist attraction that has got them pouring in?). Last month saw the highest ever March figures with some 313,000 tourists visiting the Holy Land!
That’s up a stunning 56% on last March, and almost 10% up on the previous record breaking March, back in 2000. Looking at the stats for the period January to March 2010, tourism has increased some 54% over the same period in 2009. Israel is definitely the place to be right now. If you haven’t already – come on over and join the party!
I had a feeling this was going to be a monster year for tourism to Israel, and it’s certainly panning out that way. The usual suspects are air passengers, heading to Israel’s main airport in Tel Aviv (actually just outside Tel Aviv) and even directly to Eilat, but the biggest year-on-year increase is down to the number of cruise ship passengers hitting the shores of the Holy Land. Example: in 2009, there were NO cruise ships and obviously no passengers docking in Israel. In March 2010, some 14,000 cruise ship passengers arrived!
Israeli Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov was quite rightly proud of those numbers, but at the same time is not resting on his laurels and is already pushing for additional funds to ensure the steady growth continues.
As he puts it:
The tourism industry generates employment and income – one of the fastest and most efficient in the economy – and investment in this industry will create tens of thousands of new jobs, most of them in the periphery, and additional income of hundreds of millions of shekels into the economy. The lack of a significant budget increment will make difficult the achievement of the ministry’s goal of bringing an additional one million tourists to Israel by 2012 and the economy will lose hundreds of millions of shekel and thousands of jobs. Every additional 10,000 tourists create 4000 new jobs and generate income of 450 million shekels.”
Good luck Stas me old china!