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Eli Cohen, Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Tourism analyzes on TravelDailyNews International the recent policies of the Ministry to strengthen the tourist flow in Israel.
TravelDailyNews: What was the content of the talks among the Tourism Ministries of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority regarding the tourism promotion of the region?
Eli Cohen: They discussed mainly about the issue of the borders among those countries. We want to ensure that tourists who are travelling from South America, North America, Europe to visit our region more than once. So Ministers orientated their policy to that direction and to a more cooperative frame among the specific countries in the region. There is no doubt that we are focusing in that direction today. We are trying to ease the way for tourists coming from those regions and especially in the common borders of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Ministers tried to highlight the border issue so the Ministries and the governments are focusing on creating these policies which will make the region an easy gateway for tourists to come.
TDN: What kind of measures does your organization undertake to secure the safety of the tourists in your country?
E.C.: Terrorism is becoming an international problem. We succeed in reducing 98% of the terrorist’s attacks. We built a security fence between Israel and our neighbours and we have a good army who can secure the safety in our country. Israel is considered to be one of the most secured zones in the world for tourists to visit in. Not a one tourist has ever injured to Israel compared to other countries. There is no doubt that on of the main issues that we are working together with the Palestinian authority is to secure the arrival of the tourists in the region. We are doing this very successfully with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. And we will continue with that same strategy in the future.
TDN: Are you going to expand the “two – destinations” concept with other countries as you did with Turkey?
E.C.: Definitely we support this concept with other countries, too. We have a good cooperation with the Turkish government and only few weeks ago Ministers of the two countries had met each other to expand this cooperation. We are preparing common packages. We want tourists who come to Turkey then to exceed their travel and come and visit Israel and tourists from North America who visit Israel to visit also Turkey. We want to extent this concept with other destinations as well. We have Greece in our plans. We already cooperate with Cyprus in that basis. Tourists that arrive to Cyprus and stay there for a week, they pay a visit of one or two days to Israel and then they go back to Cyprus. One of our gold destinations is South Korea as we have many tourists arrivals from that country and we are promoting this concept with South Korea.
TDN: The Israel Ministry of Tourism had recently signed agreements with major airlines and low cost carriers from US and Europe. What are your plans regarding the expansion of open – skies agreements with other regions of the world?
E.C.: We are going to reach an open sky agreement with European Union in the two following years and we already doing it with North America. We are trying but not very successfully until now to have another designated carrier flying from many countries direct to Israel. We had a lot of success in Spain, in Germany and USA. We have agreements with Hungary, Poland and then we target the neighbour countries of Israel such as Greece, but we are definitely going to fight for it in order to have more direct flights from a destination to our country.
TDN: What are your market shares (business – leisure travel) in the German market?
E.C.: In 2005, 105.000 of Germans visited Israel. We expect to have more than 150.000 during 2006 and 300.000 in 2007. Israel and Germany are cooperating in many fields such as technology, industry and they are walking together to other aspects of the tourism industry such as mice industry and business travel. We had a strong presence in this year ITB and we want to promote other aspects of Israel tourism product and we feel that ITB can help our country in that direction. Finally, I believe that ITB will have a positive outlook for us.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
