Israel Travel

The city of Tel Aviv has become a paradise for international business travelers seeking to stay in touch with their home offices while they visit the Holy Land. With the many hotspots and free Wi-Fi services offered at hotels, restaurants, fast food chains and cafés, business travelers can check e-mail almost everywhere, make free transatlantic VoIP calls using Skype, and browse the net to keep abreast of the latest news in their respective fields.

The rapid growth in the number of wireless Internet users around the world has created a need for many people to rely on Wi-Fi connections while traveling. The advantage of using Wi-Fi is that it gives business and leisure travelers added mobility and flexibility.

The ability to access the net from almost everywhere has become a necessity for business travelers who want to keep in touch with colleagues and clients regardless of their physical locations, and who want to check e-mail between meetings. Those equipped with smart-phones and other wireless handheld devices, such as Blackberry, can use them all around Israel without difficulty.   

Unlike Europe and the United States where most places charge for internet use, almost all establishments in Israel's business capital offer Internet services free of charge. Take, for example, the Atlas Hotel chain. Atlas grants all its guests free, unlimited broadband access to the Web from the hotel lobby, meeting rooms or from private guest rooms using a Wi-Fi hot spot, which is an area that allows high-speed wireless Internet access.

According to a recent survey, there are more than 200 hotspots available for laptop users in the greater Tel Aviv area alone. The majority of these are offered by hotels, restaurants and coffee shops, but visitors to Israel can also access the net at gas stations, hospitals, parks, universities, shopping malls and other places of interest such as Rabin Square in downtown Tel Aviv.

The number of hot spots in Israel has been doubled in each of the previous few years and is expected to continue growing at that pace in the foreseeable future. Any businessman with a laptop computer can check e-mail almost anywhere without having to pay for it.

Here is a list of hotspots in Tel Aviv that offer free high-speed wireless Internet access:

Hotels
The Atlas Hotel Chain offers unlimited and free of charge Wi-Fi services in six of its hotels in Tel Aviv: Basel Hotel, Tal Hotel, Melody Hotel, City Hotel, Cinema Hotel and Center Hotel. The services is available in the main banquet halls, restaurants, poll area, bar and the in the lobby.

Coffee Bars
Arcaffè chain is not only bringing real Italian espresso bars to Tel Aviv, but also offering high quality wireless access in all its coffee bars around Tel Aviv, from Ramat Aviv Mall in the north of Tel Aviv to Rothschild Boulevard at the finance center of the city. Other large coffee chains – such as Aroma, Cup 'O' Joe, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Coffee To Go - offer Wi-Fi services for free. Such services are provided also by many other cafes such as Merelin Monroe Café, Noah Coffee, Coffee Print and others.

Restaurants
Leading American Fast Food Chains McDonald's and Burger King Offer free of charge wireless services in their branches in Tel Aviv.  There is Wi-Fi spot in the brasseire restaurant, which is located on Iben Gavirol Street near Rabin Square. Kyoto Salsa Restaurant, and Messa, one of Tel Aviv's most elegant restaurants, are also offering fast internet access.

Public Places
At the trendy Tel Aviv Port there's no need to enter one of the many restaurants or bars in the area. This prime entertainment center features Wi-Fi Internet access, meaning web surfers and businessmen can take a seat on the boardwalk and connect to cyberspace.  Dizengoff Shopping Mall in central Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion InternationalAirport also feature Wi-Fi hotspots.

So don't think twice about taking a laptop on a business trip to Tel Aviv. One is immediately connected upon landing in Israel - not just to the warm, friendly people of the Holy Land, but to all people connected to the net. Home away from home, they call it in the hospitality industry.

Print advertisements include depictions of a dancer on the beach in Tel Aviv, a chef in Jerusalem, a cowboy on the Golan Heights, a Tel Aviv high-tech expert whose hobby is building guitars, and an archeologist atop Masada. The television campaign will be concentrated in New York, Los Angeles and south Florida.

Travelers from North America representing the largest single source of tourism to the country, with some 600,000 North Americans visited Israel in 2006, almost 30% of the total tourists visiting Israel last year. Israel goal is to double North American tourism to Israel by 2010.

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A record 23,500 Jewish young adults are expected to visit Israel this summer as part of Taglit birthright, israel's free 10-day educational trips. The expected income for tourism from these trips this summer is estimated at approximately $47.5 million, according to a report by the Jerusalem Post.

The 23,500 participants, between the ages of 18 and 26 and from 35 countries worldwide, will visit Israel between May 1 and August 21, 2007. Taglit-birthright israel's founders created this program to send thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world and  to learn about the State of Israel.

The gift of the 10-day trip is being provided by our partners: the people of Israel through the Government of Israel, North American Jewish Federations through the United Jewish Communities (UJC), and leading Jewish private philanthropists like, Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Edgar M. Bronfman and Ron Lauder.

Since the establishment of Taglit-birthright israel almost seven years ago, more than 123,000 young adults from 51 countries have visited Israel through the program and over $227 million in tourism revenues has been created.

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The number of tourists entered Israel in 2006 decreased by 4.5% to 1.83 million, from 1.91 million tourists in 2005, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.

The first six months of 2006 showed an increase of 22% to over 1 million tourists, compare to the same period in 2005. But the outbreak of the Lebanon war in July 2006 leads to a drop of 27% in July-December to 0.76 million tourists that entered Israel.

The United States was the largest source of visitors to Israel. 494,000 tourists arrived from US in 2006, 8% more than a year earlier. 161,000 arrived from the UK, 3% more than in 2005.

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Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli will represent Israel in the World Travel Market (WTM) tourism fair in London. The WTM 2006 is the largest business to business event in the world for the international travel and tourism industry.

Refaeli, the girlfriend of Hollywood star Leonardo d'Caprio, will participate in the opening ceremony of the Israeli booth, in the efforts to promote Israel as an attractive travel destination for travelers around the world.

More than 100 Tourism Ministers, including Israeli Minister of Tourism Isaac Herzog, will take part in the event that will open on Monday 06 November. More than 5,000 global exhibitors from 202 countries and regions will be presented at this show.

Last year 48,211 travel industry professionals attended to WTM 2005. Independent research shows over £24 billion worth of business was conducted at the event.

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Italian tour company Turisanda will begin to market Israel to Italian travelers. Turisanda is one of Italy's biggest tour companies, specializing in high-end leisure travel and educational tours. The company is owned by Hotelplan, one of the top ten largest groups of tour operators in all of Europe. Turisanda will sell tour packages to Israel through a network of 4,000 travel agents throughout Italy.

The contacts with Turisanda are part of the Israeli Tourism Ministry's wider strategy to broaden Israel's appeal beyond traditional markets. Between January and October of this year, about 60,000 Italian tourists visited Israel, a rise of 75 per cent compared to the same period last year.

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TUI, Europe’s leading tourism group, is returning to Israel after a number of years of absence. Hapagfly, a TUI Group airline, will fly from Munich to Tel Aviv once a week. In addition to expanding the flight programme, TUI Deutschland has once again included Israel in its programme for the 2005/2006 winter season after withdrawing from the country at the beginning of the second Intifada at the end of 1999.

TUI is also planning to acquire a 50-percent stake in the incoming agency Holiday Travel (Israel) Ltd with effect from 1 January 2006. Since 2003 this company has been handling all World of TUI holidaymakers in Israel.

“Despite the latest incidents the overall situation is more stable and calm. The demand for holidays in Israel has increased appreciably,” said Sebastian Ebel, member of TUI’s executive board. “The time was ripe for a return to Israel.”

Since the signing of the Sharm-El Sheikh peace initiative between the Israelis and the Palestinians in February 2005 the number of arrivals has grown significantly. After some 1.5 million arrivals in 2004 the Israeli ministry of tourism is reckoning on an increase of 25 percent to 1.9 million tourists for this year. A further 400,000 holidaymakers per year are predicted for the future.

Whereas only 1,555 tourists, most of them the Netherlands, travelled with the World of TUI to Israel in tourism year 2004/2005, some 30,000 guests are expected in the 2005/2006 season. Of these about 5,000 are tour operator customers and about 25,000 flight-only passengers. By comparison, in the last full business year before the start of the second Intifada in 1999 the tour operators in the former TUI Group took about 50,000 holidaymakers to Israel.

Delta Air Lines, the world's third largest airline, would renew operations to Israel beginning spring 2006. Following an agreement signed in Atlanta by Israeli Tourism Minister Avraham Hirchson and Delta's Chief Executive Officer Gerald Grinstein.

On March 27, 2006, Delta will begin daily service between Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport, Israel, as part of its ongoing international expansion to popular global business and tourist destinations. The addition of these flights will translate into 100,000 more seats on flights to the country. The route provides a new gateway to Israel for travelers from the Southern United States and South America, according to Minister Hirchson.

To further build support for the new service, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue will lead a technology and trade mission to Israel in November sponsored by the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce and the Georgia Department of Economic Development. The mission will generate new business opportunities for Atlanta and the Southeast while helping promote Delta's new service to Israeli business leaders.

"I am proud that Georgia will become the first southeastern state with nonstop service to Israel,'' said Governor Sonny Perdue. "This new route will boost commerce and tourism between Georgia and Israel, which have grown exponentially over the last several years.'' In 2004, Israel ranked 22nd among Georgia export destinations with exports totaling $173 million.

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A total of 1,063,917 foreigners visited Israel in the first seven months of the year, a 29 per cent rise over the same period in 2004, according to figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics and Israel's Ministry of Tourism.

268,601 U.S. tourists arrived in Israel in the first seven months of the year, a 25 per cent increase over the same period last year, and a record 174,600 French tourists arrived between January and July 2005, a 27 per cent hike.

"Our goal is to welcome five million tourists to the country by the end of 2008," said Israel's Minister of Tourism Avraham Hirchson in response to the figures.

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