Tourists hiking near Jerusalem
Tourists hiking near JerusalemIsrael news file (photo)

A huge influx of visitors to the Jewish state has smashed previous records, making March 2010 the largest tourism month in Israeli history.

A whopping 313,000 visitors – 258,000 of whom stayed longer than a day – converged on Israel in March, according to information released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.

That number is 56 percent more than in March 2009, and 17 percent more than in March 2008. 

In the first three months of 2010, 747,000 visitors arrived in Israel, 54 percent more than in the same time period in 2009, and 15 percent more than those months in 2008.