Author: Beatriz Calafate
Publication date: 23.04.2024
It is known that Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are the most profitable places in Israel when talking about tourism. But since the war between Hamas and Israel started in October, tourism has declined mostly because of safety issues. In this article, we will talk a bit about the before and after the war's start and where it mostly impacted.
Israel's Principal Source of Income
Tourism in Israel is known for being one of the principal fonts of national income, where the most part is religious tourism. Israel has a very high visitor rate, with a variety of religious beliefs like Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Most of the visitors are pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, but cities like Nazareth, Tel Aviv and Safed are also requested to visit.
When the tourism department invested in marketing the country around the world, a new record was achieved in 2019. It was possible to determine that 4.55 million tourists arrived in Israel, with the United States being the main visitor with almost 890,000 tourists.
Israel tourism in the last years
After the great year that 2019 was for Israel tourism, COVID-19 ended with the goals created for 2020. With the pandemic scattered around the world, it was necessary to look for solutions to keep the tourism sector alive. In that year, it recorded a decline of 81% in visitors, compared to 2019. After a long wait, in 2022 the world started to return to normal and the tourism sector began to have more affluence. At the end of 2022, Israel announced an expected increase in visitors, reaching 2.6 million.
Since the numbers started to increase, there was a positive expectation for 2023 tourism in Israel. The market was starting to recover from the global pandemic and return to the initial expectation of visitors, until October of 2023. More precisely, the 7th of October of 2023 was the day that the number of tourists decreased suddenly. With flights, guided trips and hotel bookings being cancelled, the tourism sector was again affected.
War and the effects on tourism
Hamas, an acronym that stands for Islamic Resistance Movement in English, is an organisation formed in 1987 to claim land for the Palestine territory. On the 7th of October of 2023, Hamas attacked Israeli territory causing the death of 1.2 million people. The group said that this war started 105 years ago, with the occupation and colonialism of the Palestine territory, and that their purpose is to get back the land that they lost. This attack made some deep economic impacts in Israel and it was considered a humanitarian disaster.
It was determined that in March of 2024, only 79,500 tourists entered Israel, which makes it a minimal number compared to 2023. In the past year, 375,600 tourists had been in Israel in March, making a huge difference between these two years. With most of the flights, to and from Israel, are suspended making visiting the country more difficult for tourists. Also, hotels housing people affected by the war make them have fewer rooms available to tourists. Combining this with the unpredictability of war, it is enough for there to be fewer and fewer tourists in Israel.
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