Foreign tourism to the Tiberias area in the Galilee has fallen by 85% this year, according to Avi Zandberg, Chairman of the Union of Hoteliers in Tiberias. Zandberg told Arutz-7 today that while Israeli internal tourism continues apace, it can support only a fraction of the Galilee area tourist industry. Tiberias hotels and the associated tourist trade once employed approximately 6,000 people, he said, but this year, as a result of the sharp downturn, half of them are now out of a job. Tiberias and the Galilee, he said, “is dependent on foreign tourism, yet Christian pilgrims, for whom the Galilee is a mainstay of their itineraries, have almost completely stopped coming.\" The situation has reached the point where all three hotels that once operated in Nazareth have closed their doors.
An emergency meeting this week of the Hoteliers Union has produced a new campaign aimed at improving the situation. The group will lobby the government for assistance to the tourist industry in the Galilee, and will seek exemptions from the Value Added Tax, in order to encourage internal Israeli tourism to the area. “We have to be able to compete,” Zandberg said. They will also seek government recognition of the Galilee as a “Preferred Area,” providing residents and investors with economic incentives. “After all,” said Zandberg, “we are the periphery.” Finally, in an effort to assist former employees, the Union will ask for temporary, emergency unemployment payments for those who lost their jobs as a result of the current situation. If the government does not intervene, said Zandberg, “the hotels will shut down entirely.”
An emergency meeting this week of the Hoteliers Union has produced a new campaign aimed at improving the situation. The group will lobby the government for assistance to the tourist industry in the Galilee, and will seek exemptions from the Value Added Tax, in order to encourage internal Israeli tourism to the area. “We have to be able to compete,” Zandberg said. They will also seek government recognition of the Galilee as a “Preferred Area,” providing residents and investors with economic incentives. “After all,” said Zandberg, “we are the periphery.” Finally, in an effort to assist former employees, the Union will ask for temporary, emergency unemployment payments for those who lost their jobs as a result of the current situation. If the government does not intervene, said Zandberg, “the hotels will shut down entirely.”