All the news about Israeli tourism

Turkish Airlines is considering adding an additional daily flight on the Antalya to Tel Aviv route from the summer of 2010.  The number of weekly flights for the airline is expected to increase from 25 to 32, Moris Kant, marketing manager: “This plan is still on the agenda, despite the political tension.”

While organizers of holiday charters to Turkey are doing all that they can to rescue this situation this year, it appears that Turkish Airlines are actually planning to add an additional daily flight each morning, starting in the summer of 2010. The strategy behind the idea is the great success in marketing ongoing long haul flights and not Istanbul as the primary destination.

Passenger traffic to Turkey fell during 2009, the cause was the continuing economic recession and the Israeli boycott of Turkey, the latter triggered by the remarks of Prime Minister Erdogan against the Israel military operation in Gaza.  If it hadn’t been for those events, Turkish Airlines indicated that it would have occupied first place as the leading foreign airline in Israel, instead of Lufthansa.

 There is a problem that Israelis do not want to fly to Istanbul as a primary destination; however we reached a decision at the beginning of the year to encourage traffic, specifically to ongoing destinations,” explained marketing manager, Moris Kant.  According to Kant, only a small number of passengers fly to Istanbul. “We don’t deny that there is a problem but we are dealing with it successfully.

Earlier in the year the company was forced to announce the cancellation of one of four daily flights in order to cope with the low demand, caused by the crisis following the military operation in Gaza.  Since then that flight has been reinstated in the timetable.

So how is this achieved in practice? According to Kant, during the peak season prices are raised while during times of depression it is necessary to lower prices.  Recently travel agents have been advertising in their reservations systems, a price of $235, excluding taxes, for a flight with Turkish Airlines to New York.

Kent refused to speculate how the recent crisis would finish, following the recent chain of events that started with the cancellation of joint military exercises and was followed by a television program regarded by Israel as “state-sponsored incitement” against the army’s actions in Gaza. However Kant commented that Israeli tourism to Turkey represented only one percent of all tourism to Turkey.