Last update - 00:00 10/04/2007
Israelis flood Northern tourist sites, hotels for first time since war
By Irit Rosenblum, Haaretz Correspondent
Tourist sites in the north of Israel were filles with local tourists in recent day, as Israelis poured into the North for the first time since last summer's war.
"As far as I'm concerned, only now has the Second Lebanon War ended," said Avshalom Zadok, the head of the Manara Cliffs tourist attraction in the Upper Galilee on Monday.
The site, which was severely damaged site by rockets during the war, is still not completely repaired, but the cable car has been fixed, at a cost of almost $2 million.
The site saw 2,500-3,000 visitors a day during the holiday period, and the trees in the area that were burned down have now started to sprout new shoots.
Ultra-Orthodox tourists, as well as Druze and Arab vacationers, flooded the site, along with other Israelis.
Other Northern tourist sites were filled with local tourists, in spite of the gentle rains and gray skies of the last three days. Hotels and bed-and-breakfasts were full, as well as restaurants and stores. There were also traffic jams in the Galilee and Golan.
Hotels in both the North and also at the Dead Sea and in Eilat, reported that though they were all full, tourists reserved much later than in previous years, or even at the last moment during the holidays.
The difference this year is in the makeup of the tourists. While hotel occupancy was in the 85-90 percent range nationwide, there were many fewer foreign tourists than expected. The numbers show a 12.5 percent decrease in incoming tourism for the period. Occupancy in the South was about 100 percent, including the Negev and Arava.
However, hoteliers are now very worried about what will happen after the holidays. Tourist arrivals were down 17 percent in January-February, compared with last year. Eilat seems to be particularly problematic, as foreign tour organizers are now closing their packages for next winter - and leaving Eilat out.
The additional $15 million added to the Tourism Ministry's budget for marketing is supposed to be applied to a concentrated effort in North America. Though this was decided upon in February, the campaign has not begun yet, and is expected to start only in May due to bureaucratic delays related to the budget. Even then the ministry may put off the marketing push.
Representatives of the tourism industry here are worried that such moves will come far too late to affect 2007 tourism, and in any case, while the decision to focus on North America is understandable, not all agree that it is the best investment.
Zohar Blumenkrantz adds:
About 30,000 passengers are expected to pass through Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday, as travelers return home - both to and from Israel. Thursday is scheduled to set the record, with 41,000 passengers. All together, during the holiday period of April 1-15, 470,000 people will have passed through the airport, a rise of 6 percent from the 2006 holiday period.
Another 30,000 people flew through Eilat, and 112,000 are expected to transit the land crossings to Taba and Jordan during the entire month of April.