Israel’s minister of tourism has angrily denied media reports that the Persian Gulf crisis has precipitated a large number of cancellations of trips to Israel and opened the prospect of a sharp falloff in Israel’s tourist traffic.
Tourism Minister Gideon Patt was so enraged when asked by army radio about the prospect of a decline in tourism that he demanded the reporter’s dismissal.
“You in the media are half-prophets,” Patt retorted when questioned by veteran broadcaster Dan Shilon. “I regret your chutzpah and will take it up with the proper persons.”
In the United States, meanwhile, tour operators are saying that concern is running high among those planning to travel to Israel. While there have been some cancellations, they said, the number has not been overwhelming.
“We haven’t had any major cancellations,” said Eileen Lowe Hart, director of marketing for Isram, one of the largest U.S. operators of tours to Israel. “Having been doing business in Israel for 24 years, we are quite used to these ups and downs.”
For Isram and other tourism agencies, the timing of the crisis has somewhat minimized its effects.
Most Jewish travelers to Israel have completed their summer trips or are in the midst of their trips, tour operators said. Jewish tourism then tends to slow down until the High Holidays, when it again increases.
Those who have planned to go to Israel for the holidays in September “are waiting to see what is going to happen,” Hart said.
CONCERN ABOUT OTHER COUNTRIES
Paul Levovitz, a travel consultant for Compass Travel, said, “It would be fair to say that people are concerned. People who have made plans are putting them on hold,” he said.
Compass Travel also handles a great deal of tourism for Christian groups traveling to Israel, Egypt and Jordan. He said that ministers have called him to express concern about the safety of all of the legs of their trips, not only Israel.
But Levovitz said that even in Amman, where there have been anti-Western demonstrations, hotels are still in operation.
A spokesman for the United Jewish Appeal, which sponsors fund-raising missions to Israel, said his organization’s only direct response to the situation has been to distribute a State Department statement which notes that there is no travel advisory in effect for Israel proper.
However, there is a longstanding U.S. warning for those traveling in the administered territories.
The spokesman said he did not know whether there had been cancellations by those scheduled to participate in upcoming UJA missions for major donors to Operation Exodus, the campaign for resettlement of Soviet Jews.
The Persian Gulf crisis has affected Israeli tourism to other countries. Many would-be holiday makers in Israel have dropped their plans to go to Turkey in August. The relatively popular tourist destination shares a border with Iraq.
(JTA staff writer Allison Kaplan in New York contributed to this report.)
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