Israel tourism rebounds in July, still well below pre-Covid levels
'The positive trend is continuing, and... this will continue through August,' says Israel's Tourism Minister
Israel's tourism continued to recover in July following the Covid pandemic, although it was 22.6 percent below its 2019 level, the Tourism Ministry said Monday.
Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov expected the trend to continue this month despite the flare-up in violence on the Gaza border that lasted from Friday to Sunday.
Some 250,000 tourist entries were recorded last month, up from just 49,000 a year earlier when Israel's borders were not fully open. In July 2019, a record year for tourism, the country attracted 323,000 visitors.
The ministry said that tourism was still down 56 percent in the January-July period from 2019 but that Israel was on pace for 2.2 million to 2.5 million tourists in 2022.
"The positive trend is continuing, and according to the information we have, this will continue through August," Razvozov said in a statement, according to Reuters.
"The events of the last few days related to the operation in Gaza are not expected to impact on the hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting Israel this month," he said.
Palestinian militants from Palestinian Islamic Jihad recently fired more than 1,000 rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip, while Israeli airstrikes hit Palestinian targets in Gaza. Israel and the group declared a truce late on Sunday, raising hopes of ending the most severe flare-up on the Gaza frontier in more than a year.
Israeli tourism struggled to rebound after a more prolonged and deadly conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza in 2014.
Tourism in 2019 hit a record high of 4.55 million visitors, contributing $7 billion to Israel's economy.