2018 is a good tourism year for Israel, with a strong increase in inbound visitor numbers.
The state saw approximately 13 percent more international entries in 2018 than 2017, a 38-percent increase over 2016. Notably, 40 percent of this year’s tourists had visited Israel before.
Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin said that he is excited to welcome next week Israel’s four millionth tourist in 2018.
This represents the unprecedented success of the Tourism Ministry, which invests in marketing Israel around the world. This includes the latest agreement signed with the Philippine Minister of Labor to increase the quota of up to 1,000 foreign workers in the hotel sector.
The direct revenues from tourism for the year reached NIS 24 billion. The ministry invested NIS 350 million in marketing Israel as a tourism destination around the world, including in countries such as the United States, Germany, Russia, Italy, England, China, Ukraine, Brazil and the Philippines. This investment yielded an average increase of 13 percent in the number of tourists from those countries, with top visitor numbers arriving from the U.S., France, Russia, Germany, the UK and China.
The Tourism Ministry also invested significant funds to expand hotels throughout Israel, allocating NIS 145 million to help develop 3,829 new guestrooms across the state, representing an annual growth of 49 percent.
Tags: Hotel Industry, Israel
