Slow Israeli tourism recovery continues

Passengers at Ben Gurion airport Credit: Michal Raz-Chaimovich
Passengers at Ben Gurion airport Credit: Michal Raz-Chaimovich

262,700 overseas visitors came to Israel in May 2022, compared with 465,700 in May 2019, before the Covid pandemic, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports.

262,700 overseas visitors came to Israel in May 2022, compared with 465,700 in May 2019, before the Covid pandemic, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. The number is up from April 2022 when 216,400 overseas visitors came to Israel, many of them during the Passover holiday.

In all of 2021 only 402,300 tourists visited Israel, while 887,100 tourists came in 2020 after a record year in 2019 when 4.5 million foreign tourists came to Israel. The country was closed to foreign tourists from mid-March 2020, except for visitors with special permission to enter, due to the Covid pandemic, re-opening briefly in November 2021, before closing again in December 2021 due to the spread of the Omicron variant.

Israel reopened to fully-vaccinated foreign tourists on January 9, 2022 and to all foreign tourists on March 1. In January 46,700 visitors entered Israel, 90,400 in February, and 168,900 in March. In total 785,000 foreign tourists entered Israel in the first five months of 2022.

Meanwhile, the number of Israelis travelling abroad has almost reached pre-Covid levels. In May 2022, 1.63 million passengers passed through Ben Gurion airport, six times the number who passed through in May 2021, and not far below the 1.93 million who passed through the airport in May 2019.

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 7, 2022.

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2022.

Passengers at Ben Gurion airport Credit: Michal Raz-Chaimovich
Passengers at Ben Gurion airport Credit: Michal Raz-Chaimovich
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