Tourism Arrivals Reach 7-year High

About 223,000 tourists entered the country last month, boosting the total by 9.1% to 1.46 million in the eight months through August, the Central Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. Arrivals in August 2006 fell because of the Second Lebanon War, which broke out the month before.

"The August figures prove that the tourism sector has recovered from the crisis it had following the Lebanon War," Tourism Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said in a statement.

Tourism accounts for about 2% of the country's economy, according to current account figures, bringing in about $2.5 billion last year. That contribution may more than double when all tourism spending is included, according to a knesset study.

Visitor arrivals are at their highest since the millennial year brought a record number of tourists.

The second Intifada, which broke out at the end of that year, sent figures plummeting until 2004, when tourism began to recover.

The government has set a goal of boosting the number of tourists to 5 million by 2012, more than double the 2.3 million arrivals that are expected this year, Aharonovitch said. In 2000, 2.6 million tourists arrived in Israel.

"It's been the best-ever July and August," said Rafi Baeri, vice president of marketing and sales at the Dan Hotels Corp. He said that the hotel chain, which owns the historic King David Hotel in Jerusalem and 12 other four- and five-star hotels around the country, is expecting a "record" year for 2007.

Tourists make up about 65% of the Tel Aviv-based hotel chain's guests, with about 35% of overseas guests arriving from the US and Canada, and another third from Europe, mainly Britain and France, he said. The remaining one-third are from the former Soviet Union, the Far East, and South America.

"The tourists are returning, pretty much at the pace that we expected, though we are still not at the level that we were," said Rami Levy, vice president of marketing for El Al Israel Airlines Ltd., the country's largest carrier.

Most of the recovery this year has been due to the increase in tourism from France and the US, Shmuel Zurel, director general of the Tel Aviv-based Israel Hotel Association said.

Courtesy of The Jerusalem Post
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