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Data released by the Economic department of the Israel Hotel Association for February 2009 shows a 24 percent fall in the number of tourist hotel nights compared to last February.  Hotel nights for Israelis fell by 7 percent compared to February 2008.   The hoteliers report that they expect incoming tourism at Passover to be down by at least 10 percent on last year.

The total number of hotel nights recorded in February 2009 was 1.1 million, down by 16 percent on February of last year. Hotel occupancy during the month stood at 47 percent, down 16 percent on February 2008.  The data shows that the total number of incoming tourist nights during February was 503 thousand, compared to 660 thousand for the same period last year, a fall of 24 percent.

The region with the largest decline in hotel nights was the Dead Sea, down by 42 percent in February.  But Haifa, Herzliya, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem also recorded sharp declines in February.  Bucking the negative trend was Eilat which recorded an 18 percent increase in hotel nights from tourists and a 3 percent increase in hotel nights from Israeli guests.

According to Shmuel Zuriel, director general of the Israel Hotel Association, February was not a good month for the hotels still suffering from the effects of the military operation in Gaza and the global economic crisis. However the city of Eilat provided evidence that the solution to the current crisis lay in aggressive marketing.

He added that marketing efforts plus the return of charter flights to Eilat resulted in the growth of inbound tourism to Eilat, against all of the trends in the rest of the country.  For those working in the tourist industry time is running out for 2009, despite the huge efforts to market Israel to the world and is the now the time for those in the industry to invest in order to prevent the slide continuing into 2010.

Zuriel said that the forecasts for the Passover holiday were not looking good with incoming tourism down by at least 10 percent on 2008.  He added that the fall in tourism was particularly serious, because with the Easter holidays overlapping with Passover, this would normally be expected to be an especially positive time for incoming tourism.

Since the beginning of 2009 the total number of hotel nights was 2.2 million, a fall of 13 percent on last year.  Hotel nights from overseas visitors totaled 1 million, a fall of 21 percent on the same period in 2008; while Israeli hotel nights totaled 1.2 million, a reduction of 5 percent on last year.   Hotel occupancy of 46 percent was a 17 percent reduction on February 2008.