By: TPS Staff
The year 2019 was very successful for the Israeli tourism industry which set a new record for incoming tourism and saw an 11% increase in tourist arrivals over 2018.
About 4.55 million tourists visited Israel, injecting about NIS 20 billion into the Israeli economy.
The number of tourist stays in Jerusalem increased by 8% in 2019, and by 9% in Tel Aviv and 18% in Tiberias.
Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin stated that “this historic achievement is a direct result of the ongoing revolution in marketing Israel around the world.”
The Tourism Ministry has launched campaigns in China, India and Europe to encourage tourism from new destinations, has invested in infrastructure development, and has offered incentives for international airlines to open new routes to the country.
“Incoming tourism contributes to the development of the periphery and the economy and I am proud to lead this,” Levin added.
Director-General of the Ministry of Tourism Amir Halevi noted that “this is the third consecutive year that we have broken the record for incoming tourism to Israel,” dramatically increasing tourism visits from two to four and a half million entries annually.
The leading source countries for incoming tourism were the US, France, Russia, Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, China, Ukraine and Romania.
Some 54 percent of tourists said that their views on Israel changed for the better after visiting the country, and 93 percent ranked their experience as good to excellent, according to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism’s 2018 Inbound Tourism Annual Report published in July.
More than half, 55 percent, of the tourists visiting Israel in 2018 were Christian, just over a quarter were Jewish, and approximately 2.4 percent were Muslims.
The best-maintained sites in Israel according to the survey were the Tel Aviv port, Masada and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
This year, Israel’s Tourism Ministry welcomed approximately 165,000 Christian visitors to Israel for the holiday season.
The Ministry of Tourism has been offering free roundtrip shuttle transportation to help pilgrims traveling between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
The Ministry also hosted its traditional annual pre-Christmas reception for Church leaders and members of the Christian communities in Israel. Tourism Minister Yariv Levin greeted the guests in honor of the holiday season. Ambassadors, heads of Christian organizations in Israel, pilgrimage organizers and other dignitaries from different communities also attend the special event.
According to Tourism Ministry statistics, approximately half of all tourists who visited Israel in 2019 were Christian and almost every 4th tourist arriving in Israel defined themselves as pilgrims.
The ministry estimates that about 165,000 of all tourists arrived in Israel in December 2019 and will arrive in January 2020 will be Christian pilgrims. In total, 660,000 tourists are expected to enter Israel during these two months.
In 2019, 43% of the Christian visitors were Catholic, 31% were Protestants, and 24% were Orthodox.
Among the Protestants, 83% were Evangelicals who comprise 28% of all Christian tourists and 13% of all tourists, while 15% were from the mainstream and the Afro-American church.
Among the Orthodox, 74% belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, and 26% to the Greek Orthodox and others.
In total, 24% of all visitors to Israel defined the purpose of their visit as a pilgrimage. The vast majority of all Christian visitors, 84%, visit Jerusalem, with about 65% visiting Tel Aviv.
The most visited sites by Christians are the Western Wall, The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Via Dolorosa, and the Mount of Olives.
(TPS)
