Israel Campaigns to Salvage Tourist Trade

Reeling from nearly four months of bloodshed, Israel hopes to salvage its devastated tourism industry with a campaign to attract a combination of supportive Jews, Christian evangelicals and European sun worshipers.

The Israeli-Palestinian violence that has claimed about 370 lives has prompted a U.S. State Department warning, renewed this month, against travel to the Holy Land and has damaged tourism, new figures show. Travel to Israel in the last three months of 2000 was down by more than 50% compared with the same period the previous year.

The State Department, in its Jan. 12 announcement, “warns U.S. citizens to defer travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza” because of “a heightened threat of terrorist incidents.” It urges Americans to avoid shopping areas, malls, public buses and bus stops, crowded areas and demonstrations.

Israeli officials denounced the warning as unfair. “It is more extreme and more harsh than the reality,” said Oren Drori of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

Mindful that most tourists are still reluctant to travel here, the ministry has scaled back its publicity campaigns and instead is wooing specific audiences with direct mail and targeted advertising. Israel is spending about $1 million in the U.S. to promote “solidarity” tours for sympathetic Jews and evangelical Christians, Drori said.

Indeed, most guests in Jerusalem hotels these days seem to be with solidarity groups, such as a delegation of rabbis from Southern California who arrived earlier this month. And the Rev. Jerry Falwell was reported to be visiting this month as well.