Christmas Pilgrims Push Israel To Record 3 Million Tourists In 2008

EP News--- Despite the increased violence in the Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of visitors arrived for Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem in December, an influx that was expected to push tourism to Israel to a record high of three million visitors in 2008.

The town of Christ’s birth spent months readying for a crush of Christian pilgrims in Manger Square, following years of dismal figures during the holiday season. Local hotels are reporting 100 percent bookings and as many as 60,000 visitors were expected by Christmas Day.

Today, Bethlehem is an Arab city of over 100,000 that has lost its Christian majority. The city council has been dominated in recent years by loyalists of Hamas, whose bombing campaign earlier this decade forced Israel to encircle the town with a security wall.

Bethlehem has high unemployment and relies heavily on tourism, which normally peaks around the Nativity celebrations. Thus, Israeli authorities have made extra efforts to ease the entry of pilgrims into Bethlehem this Christmas.

“There is not just an atmosphere of peace, but an atmosphere of trust for the whole world to see. We believe, when it comes to tourism, there are no borders,” said Raphael Ben-Hur, senior Deputy Director General of the Tourism Ministry.

According to statistics released in December by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, the three million visitors who will have entered Israel this year marks an all-time high and represents a 30 percent increase over 2007. Some two-thirds of the tourists who arrived in the Holy Land this year, totaling two million travelers, were Christians. Roughly half of them were Catholics and the other half various Protestant and Orthodox denominations.

The United States accounted for 625,000 visitors in 2008 (20 percent of all incoming tourism), followed by Russia, France the United Kingdom, and then several other European countries plus Canada. For 58 percent of tourists in 2008, this was their first visit to Israel, whereas 42 percent had previously visited the country.
(1/8/2009)

[Back]