Faith travel, events to increase Israel tourism

This week, the Israel Ministry of Tourism hosted a breakfast seminar for 80 travel media, honoured guests, trade personnel and religious leaders at Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel.

The event was to introduce Uri Steinberg, consul and commissioner for North America, Israel Ministry of Tourism, to the Canadian industry. It also marked a fond farewell to Ami Allon, consul for tourism, IGTO Canada, who is returning to Israel.

Allon started the seminar with an overview of Israel tourism thus far in 2015.

“Our emphasis for the last year, the last two years in fact, has been on Ontario and Montreal, as that has been where most of the traffic is coming from,” said Allon, adding that there has also been an outreach to other areas of the country.

Allon then spoke about Israel’s tumultuous journey in tourism, saying that until June, 2014 had been Israel’s best year ever for tourism.

“At the end of the year, it was worse than 2013,” he said.

However, Allon added that although numbers are low in 2015 so far, on a world-scale, Israel is holding its own in tourism. “We need to be optimistic about the future, not pessimistic. We are heading in the right direction.”

Allon touched on the numerous ways to get to Israel, with some airlines offering direct flights from Toronto. Allon then spoke about the importance of targeting specific markets, such as the Christian Evangelical market, revealing Israel’s new Christian Evangelical campaign, which will be launched soon.

“This is a growing market. Israel is on their bucket list and they need to find out how to go. We need to help them with that,” said Allon.

Allon emphasized the importance of helping agents to become educated about Israel in order to be able to sell the destination with confidence. He then mentioned the IGTO learning centres and the Israel Specialist Program. “The purpose is to get to new agents that don’t know Israel and don’t even think about selling Israel. They don’t know how to do it. So we give them the first taste of Israel and later on we will be there to follow up with them.”

Allon also said these learning tools are for more experienced agents to become more informed about what is happening daily in Israel, so as to be able to promote the destination in new ways to their clients.

Allon then stressed the importance of using anchor events such as Israel’s jazz festival and film festival for promotional purposes and as key selling points.

“There are so many events and reasons for people to go to Israel,” said Allon.

Steinberg then took the podium to speak about the perception of Israel as an unsafe place and how educating travellers about Israel is part of the work to be done as tourism moves forward.

“People know about Israel. People want to go to Israel,” said Steinberg, adding that the Facebook pages of the various facets of Israel tourism have over 3.8 million followers. “Let’s talk about safety. We have to talk about the elephant in the room.”

Steinberg also echoed Allon’s sentiment that Israel’s 2015 tourism numbers are encouraging and he is anticipating 2016/2017 to be banner years.

Steinberg then commended Allon on his hard work during his three years in Canada. Allon responded with words of thanks to the Canadian travel industry. 

Donna Holbrook, national executive director, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem Canada, also praised Allon’s contributions in promoting Israel to Canadians and presented him with a parting gift.

For more information, visit www.goisrael.ca.