Is it safe to travel to Israel?

IT WAS supposed to be a record-breaking year for tourist visits but this city is full of empty hotel rooms and desolate sites. So what happened?

War has affected Israel’s tourism and staple industries including fishing.

IT WAS supposed to be a record-breaking year for tourist visits to Israel. But all that changed when the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas prompted jittery travellers to cancel trips en masse, leaving empty hotel rooms and barren tourist sites in their wake.

The summertime fighting delivered a serious hit to Israel’s thriving tourism industry, causing losses of hundreds of millions of dollars and sparking concern that aftershocks may continue well after the war. “Our challenge is how to prevent more cancellations. Despite a month having passed since the war, there is still an image among tourists that it is not safe to travel here,” said Oded Grofman of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association. Israel’s war against Hamas came at the beginning of the peak tourist season, which includes July and August and runs through the Jewish High Holiday season and early winter. Israel launched the war on July 8 in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and to destroy a network of tunnels used to attack Israelis. More than 2,100 Palestinians and 72 people on the Israeli side were killed. Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire on August 26. None of the casualties on the Israeli side occurred in the country’s tourist hubs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which endured rocket attacks but were largely protected by the Iron Dome missile defence system. Still, gruesome images of the war beamed around the world scared tourists away. Before the war, the country hoped for a record-breaking year for tourist visitors. Since the second Palestinian uprising subsided nearly a decade ago, Israel has enjoyed a tourism boom, with as many as 3.6 million foreign visitors to the country last year. Tourism is now an estimated $A5.41 billion industry and provides more than 110,000 jobs in Israel. But the war caused a 31 per cent drop in foreign visitors to Israel during that period compared to 2013, with the decline in August reaching 36 per cent. The number of visitors during that month was the lowest since February 2009, shortly after fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants. Israel’s Tourism Ministry estimates the losses to be upward of $623 million. A post-war influx of visitors for the Jewish holidays is expected to bring some relief, but not enough to salvage a miserable season. Merchants in Jerusalem’s Old City, a top tourist destination, say they are still feeling the sting. The area’s cobblestone streets are typically filled with tourists purchasing chintzy wares and cheeky T-shirts and visiting the holy sites. But they’ve been eerily empty over the summer. Beyond tourists, the war also drove away foreign acts, with many artists slated to perform this summer — among them Neil Young, the Backstreet Boys and Lana Del Rey — pulling out. Singer Lady Gaga did end up performing in front of a crowd of 20,000 people in Tel Aviv. The tourism industry is hoping to bounce back. Israel’s Tourism Ministry is set to launch new campaigns in markets in the US, Germany and Russia meant to target niche travellers, including Jewish and Christian communities. This year is largely unsalvageable, but officials hope that the numbers will rise again. ���People abroad might feel that things here are unsafe but this is a very, very safe country,” Tourism Minister Uzi Landau said. “This is exactly the kind of perception that we would like to share with all of our potential visitors.”