Ministry of Tourism takes a stand at ITB
With the repercussions of the operation in Gaza still rumbling on, plus the continuing global economic crisis, the aim of the Ministry of Tourism is to prevent any further damage to the tourist industry. The Ministry will be attempting to encourage European tourism to Israel at the ITB travel exhibition, the largest such exhibition in the world, which opens in Berlin on 11th March.
Representatives of the Ministry of Tourism lead by Minister Ruhama Avraham will start the activities of the Israeli booth, with Director General of the ministry, Shaul Zemach and 40 representatives of the Israeli tourist industry, who will work together to strengthen existing ties with representatives of the German tourist industry who already work closely with Israel and will attempt to develop ties with new agents and to examine the possibility of cooperating in order to promote tourism to Israel.
The message from Director General of the Ministry of Tourism, Shaul Zemach is that as well as explaining Israel’s security situation, the Ministry is promoting tourism to Israel, while strengthening the relationships with the leading tourist wholesalers in the world in order to develop additional tourism contacts in the fields of aviation and hotel keeping to enable growth in the volume of tourist activities.
Zemach added “Our operations in Germany will cost 22 million shekels in 2009 – our second largest budget after North America, this is because of the importance of Germany, a country having a large potential of tourism to Israel which is still to be realized.”
Expected at ITB will be 11,000 representatives from 180 countries. It is estimated that as in past years that there will be about 100,000 visitors from the world’s tourist industry plus another 70,000 potential tourists from members of the public.
According to data from the Ministry of Tourism, 140,000 German tourists visited Israel during 2008, a growth of 40 per cent compared to 2007. In January 2009 there was an 18% per cent reduction in German tourists visiting Israel.
Berlin