"Israel is largely unknown to British tourists who are not Jewish," says British Midland Airways (BMI) CEO Nigel Turner. The airline inaugurated flights to Israel last week.
Turner said that the fact that neither he nor any of his acquaintances had ever visited Israel underscored his comment, even though he believes that Israel is an excellent destination for weekend holidays by British vacationers.
Turner said that the reason was Israel's poor image in the British media, which tends to be rather unsupportive. Another factor was the lack of seats on routes to Israel, which he attributed to the fact that only two carriers - El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL) and British Airways plc LSE: BAY) flew between London and Tel Aviv for 40 years. He believes that the addition of more carriers will boost both the number of tourists and the number of seats on flights to Israel, which will bring about lower prices.
After BMI entered the market, El Al announced that it would use Boeing 777 on its Tel Aviv-London route, boosting the number of seats by 20%, while British Airways announced fare cuts.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 17, 2008
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