Tourism on the rise, despite bottlenecks at entrances
By HAIM SHAPIRO
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1999
The local tourism industry, which had been on the decline since the peak
year of 1995, now seems to be looking up, according to Avi Ella, president
of the Hotel Association.
But, he says, the situation at Ben-Gurion Airport, where visitors sometimes
have to wait hours to pass through border control, could destroy the whole
industry.
Ella said that if the last quarter of 1999 was an indication, the situation
is very
good.
In the four-property Caesar hotel chain, which he heads, there was an
occupancy rate of almost 100 percent in a period when tourism is
traditionally slow.
At least until May, reservations were good, he added. Eilat, which usually
has about 100,000 guests from charter packages during the winter season,
had about 150,000 this past season.
The problem, said Ella, cannot be solved before the millennium since, in
terms of incoming tourism, 'we are already in the millennium.'
However, he added, there are interim solutions that have been put forward
by Tourism Minister Amnon Lipkin- Shahak and Internal Security Minister
Shlomo Ben-Ami.
One possibility would be to eliminate the lengthy checks on incoming
Israelis at the airport, relying on spot-checks instead. If one wants to
keep track of incoming and outgoing Israelis, it would be possible to have
them fill out a form which could be filed at non-peak times.
'The whole problem is that of the peak times. You can have a thousand
passengers and they pass through easily, and then you get another 100 and
suddenly they are all jammed up,' Ella said.
He also called upon the Airports Authority not to scrap its plans for a
temporary terminal, to serve until the new Ben-Gurion 2000 structure is
completed.
The temporary terminal was initially planned when the Tourism Ministry
expected four million tourists in 2000. Now that this number has been
scaled down (the latest ministry prediction is 3.2 million) Ella fears that
the authority might feel a temporary terminal is unnecessary.
Ella pointed out that, barring any unforeseen event, tourism is likely to
continue to grow in the coming years, whether or not the new terminal is
completed.
'We have no assurance that Ben-Gurion 2000 will be ready in 2002, as they
say,' he said, adding that the terminal, as the name implies, had been
planned to be completed by next year.
Ella himself hopes for a yearly growth in the number of incoming visitors
of between five percent and eight percent. That, he said, is an obtainable
goal and one which
would not suddenly overtax the country's resources.
However, even for that goal, one needs a continuous marketing campaign. The
hoteliers, Ella said, allocated NIS 140m. a year for marketing, over a
third of
the tourism marketing budget of NIS 340m. Others who contributed include El
Al. However, he added, the Finance Ministry must understand that it is in
the interest of the national economy that it contribute its share.
'I can't [pay for marketing abroad] to support the restaurants, the bus
drivers, the guides, and the souvenir shops,' Ella said.
Finally, Ella called for a complete revamping of the country's rail
network, to lessen the burden of domestic transport and that of tourists
from abroad. The country needs rapid trains from the airport to Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv, he said.
'If they only spend NIS 250m. to restore the present track, they will be
making a great mistake,' he said.
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