Israel’s struggling tourism sector is optimistic about reaping benefits from reopening in May

Published on : Friday, April 23, 2021

Israel’s struggling tourism sector is optimistic about reaping quick benefits with tourism reopening next month after a rapid Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

Airlines are hurrying to add flights to Tel Aviv since groups of foreign tourists who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 will be allowed into Israel from May 23.

“As we look to the world reopening and travel resuming, the Italies and Frances are a little behind Israel in terms of when we anticipate travel will reopen. And that’s due to vaccines,” said Brian Znotins, the vice president of network and schedule planning at American Airlines, referring to two other tourist destinations.

Israel has vaccinated more than half its population, and it wants to make sure that its reopening does not bring an increase in Covid-19 infections.

“We do not want to risk any of the variants that might come into Israel and jeopardize normalcy,” said Tourism Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen.

The minister said that it “should harness this advantage to our economic and tourism benefit.”

However, Israel is initially opening only to a small group of tourists, and it could take at least until July to welcome more tourists.

Israel also anticipates stiff competition from other countries planning to open, like Greece.

Znotins said, “We have these wide bodies and not much else to do with them. We think Tel Aviv will outperform the rest of the transatlantic market.” American Airlines plans to launch a Dallas-Fort Worth to Tel Aviv route in October on Boeing 787 aircraft. United Airlines, with 13 weekly flights from Newark and San Francisco, will add three flights from Chicago and two more from Newark in May. Flights from Washington will restart later this year. Delta Air Lines and Israel’s flag carrier, El Al , are also adding flights.

“Opening of the sky is a true message to going back to normality,” said Farkash-Hacohen.