EJP | News | Israeli tourism grows in 2006

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Israeli tourism grows in 2006

Updated: 02/Jul/2006 12:11

City of Ceasaria in Israel

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JERUSALEM (EJP)--- Recently released figures by Israel’s ministry of tourism shows that tourism to Israel for the first five months of the year was up by a quarter on the figures for the corresponding time last year.

According to the figures released by the ministry 883,900 visitors entered the country between January and May of this year.

Some say this is all down to a re-structuring of the tourism industry and the significant priority this sector has been provided in the new government.

New priorities for tourism

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	European charters return to Israel
	German tourism to Israel set to rise
	Europeans flocking to Israel

Speaking to Ha'aretz , Mickey Federman, Chairman of Dan Hotels said: "The combination of Herzog as tourism minister, Avraham Hirchson as finance minister and Ehud Olmert as prime minister - will for the first time bring us back to what we had when Uzi Baram was tourism minister, Avraham Shochat was minister of finance and Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister."

In March 2006, Federman presented Hirchson with recommendations on how to increase the number of tourists coming to Israel.

The recommendations were the work of a "national task force" he was asked to lead.

The task force's main recommendations were to recognise the tourism industry as a preferred industry, set a target of five million tourists by 2011, declare Israel's 60th year of independence in 2008 as a year of tourism and to have cabinet-level discussions on the construction of a casino.

Further investment

"The growth in tourism is encouraging, and only emphasises the need for further investment in the industry to realise our goal of bringing three million visitors to the country this year," said Israeli Minister of Tourism Isaac Herzog.

Herzog also predicted increased marketing efforts will see 2,6 million tourists arriving by the end of the year. The minister referred to the latest forecast and plans to re-launch English and Russian-language tourism websites.

The tourist figures from areas within Europe are particularly encouraging for Israel.

There was almost a 50 percent increase in tourism from Russia over last year, with tourism from the Ukraine up by 41 percent.

Austrian tourism to Israel was up a whopping 70 percent followed by the more modest increases from Italy (30 percent) and the UK (25 percent).