The four day World Travel Market (WTM), the second largest tourism fair in the world, opened today in London (2.11.15) and is expected to attract over 50,000 people from the worldwide tourism industry, who will be exposed to over 4,000 exhibitors. The Director-General of the Tourism Ministry Amir Halevi said “We are meeting with airline representatives who are expressing interest in opening new routes to Israel and, as a result of the success of the Groupon USA collaboration (which sold over 1000 packages in a few days), there is also interest from e-commerce websites in creating cheap vacation packages to Israel. We have the impression of “business as usual”; the tourism industry today is aware that periods of instability occur all over the world. We have also registered a significant achievement with the announcement that ITT, the most important conference for the UK travel industry, will take place in Israel in June 2016, with the participation of about 400 senior representatives from the British travel industry.”

Halevi continued that he was encouraged by the fact that major airlines such as Ryanair and Monarch from Europe and Hainan Airlines from China are all about to open new routes into Israel. This, against the background of about 20 new weekly flights into Eilat (Ovdah airport) for the winter season from Europe, as a result of Tourism Ministry incentives.

Halevi met with major tour operators to discuss marketing agreements and to promote Israel as a destination for international conventions. It should be noted that the Tourism Ministry recently won the tender to host the annual convention for the UK travel industry, IT, in Tel Aviv in June 2016, with the participation of about 400 representatives from the British travel industry, from tour operators to airline companies. The last time this conference was held in Israel was 22 years ago. Visitors to the Israel booth enjoyed live cooking demonstrations of Israeli cuisine by leading Israeli chef Yossi Elad from Mahneyuda restaurant in Jerusalem.

The Tourism Ministry has participated in WTM for the last three decades. The Israeli booth, which is located in the European section, spreads over 400 square meters and features, in addition to Tourism Ministry representatives, commercial Israeli tourism enterprises, including hotel chains, airline companies, incoming tour operators, commercial entrepreneurs and tourism authority representatives from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Galil and Eilat..

England is the fifth largest source country for incoming tourism into Israel, after the USA, Russia, France and Germany. In the period January – June 2015, 86,524 tourists visited Israel from England. According to the Jan-June 2015 Inbound Tourism Survey prepared by the ministry, the average tourist from England spends $1, 321 during an average length stay of 8.5 nights. 70% of tourists from England are returning visitors; 38% are Christian (mainly Catholics and Protestants) and 40% are Jewish.

The most popular sites for English tourists (in descending order) are the Kosel and the Jewish Quarter (47%), the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (35%), Old Jaffa (34%), Tel Aviv Port (23%), as well as Capernaum, the Tower of David, Yad Vashem Qumran and Beit Shean.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)