A hotel employee stands at the entrance to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on June 19, 2018. REUTERS / Ammar Awad

Israel’s struggling tourism sector hopes to reap quick benefits when the country reopens next month after a rapid COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

Airlines are scrambling to get flights to Tel Aviv as groups of foreign tourists vaccinated against COVID-19 will be allowed into Israel from May 23. Continue reading

“When we look at the reopening of the world and the resumption of travel, the Italians and Frances are a little behind Israel in terms of the likely reopening of the travel. And that’s because of vaccines,” said Brian Znotins, vice president of networking and scheduling at American Airlines (AAL.O)referring to two other tourist destinations.

Israel, which has vaccinated more than half of its population, sees its greatest challenge in ensuring that its reopening does not allow for a further surge in COVID-19 infections.

“We don’t want to risk any of the variants that come to Israel and endanger normalcy,” Tourism Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen told Reuters.

However, she described Israel as the first country to emerge from the pandemic and said it should “use this asset for our economic and tourist benefit”.

Concerns about preventing infections from rising further mean Israel is initially only opening up to small groups of tourists. It could be at least until July before all tourists can come.

Other problems facing the global tourism sector include people’s belief that travel is safe and the quarantine requirements in many countries for people returning from abroad.

Israel will also face competition from other countries such as Greece planning to open. Continue reading

With the largest percentage of tourists to Israel coming from the US, American Airlines will launch flights from New York in early May and a month later from Miami on Boeing 777 planes that were grounded during the pandemic.

“We have these broad bodies and not much else to do with them,” Znotins told Reuters. “We believe Tel Aviv will outperform the rest of the transatlantic market.”

American Airlines plans to launch a route from Dallas-Fort Worth to Tel Aviv with Boeing 787 aircraft in October.

United Airlines (UAL.O)With 13 weekly flights from Newark and San Francisco, there will be three flights from Chicago and two more from Newark in May. Flights from Washington will resume later this year.

Delta Airlines (FROM N) and Israel’s flag bearer El Al (ELAL.TA), also add flights.

“The opening of the sky is a real message to return to normal,” said Farkash-Hacohen.

TOURISM HAMED BY PANDEMIC

After a record 4.55 million tourists in 2019, only 832,000 visited in 2020 – mostly in January and February – a loss of $ 5.3 billion in revenue last year, the Department of Tourism said.

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, travel and tourism contributed 5.9% to Israel’s gross domestic product in 2019.

Israel reopened its economy a month ago after a third lockdown greatly reduced infections, and is now allowing visits from immediate family members from abroad.

“There is some catching up to do from people who are motivated to travel – people who have not seen their parents, grandparents and families in the past year and a half or two,” said Ronen Nissenbaum, managing director of the Dan Hotel chain.

He expected a relatively quick return to good utilization.

Travelers must have negative PCR and serological tests on arrival at Ben-Gurion International Airport before boarding. Israel is discussing with other countries how vaccination certificates can be validated.

“It is the gateway to the country and possibly a gateway to (COVID-19) mutations,” said Yoram Keness, founder of Omega Israel, who runs the coronavirus testing laboratory in Ben-Gurion.

He said tests that give results within 10 hours would “give control over everything that comes into the country”.

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.