All the news about Israeli tourism

The Ministry of Tourism announced that after a break of 9 years, the Finnish tour operator Aurinkomatkat is to renew flights from Finland to Israel.  Also, following the purchase of the Estonian travel company Horizon Travel, they will also start operating direct flights from Estonia to Israel.

Based on the information from the Ministry of Tourism, during the period from October until December 2009, the Finnish company will begin operating weekly charter flights on the route from Tallinn to Eilat.  The flights, with 180 seats, will depart every Sunday and will be joined with a series of charter flights that the company will operate from Finland and Saint Petersburg to Israel.

It was also reported, that the Scandinavian Tourist Board is continuing its activities to encourage tourism from Estonia to Israel, with an emphasis on tourism to the city of Eilat.  In addition to the activities to increase the number of flights, an event will take place in Estonia at the end of September, in cooperation with the tourism bureau and the Eilat Hotels Association, where it is expected that more than a 100 travel agents will participate.

In addition, from the start of October through until April, two weekly flights will operate on the Helsinki to Eilat route, which will add to the 12 charter flights between Helsinki and Tel Aviv. “The open skies policy expands the aviation capacity to Israel from existing destinations and allows operations to new destinations,” indicated Minister Misezhnikov.  

The Scandinavian Tourist Board will provide a week of seminars during August for travel agents and to priests in Finland.  In the seminars, which will be held in the 6 main cities in Finland, about 50 people are expected to participate per seminar, where the main attractions and options for a visit to Israel will be presented to them.

Since the start of the year (January to June) approximately 30,000 tourists from the Nordic countries visited Israel, representing an an increase of 7 percent compared to the corresponding period last year.  More than 9,000 tourists visited from Finland (an increase of 71 percent), about 8,000 from Sweden, approximately 6,000 from Norway, and 5,500 visitors from Denmark with a small number of visitors from Iceland.