There is no better time for planning a trip to the Holy Land.
And no one knows Israel like Yael Adventures.
We have been planning and organizing tours to Israel since 1988 and provide a complete tour experience (including travel, food, accommodations and special activities) tailored to meet the needs of each group that travels with us. Our customized itineraries include a variety of unique experiences, including the Incense Route and the secrets of Petra; outdoor workshops by retired Israeli army officers and Druze cooking workshops.
With Yael Adventures, you can relax and leave the details to us, which means you’re free to experience and enjoy all the Holy Land has to offer.
Why Israel? Why Now?
According to the Israeli Minister of Tourism, more than a million tourists visited Israel in the first quarter of 2011, a 4% increase over the same period in 2010. Counting those arriving by air and cruise passengers, 1,040,000 visitors arrived in Israel during the first quarter of the year, including 300,000 in April alone – 18% more than visited Israel in April 2009.
In addition, Israel recently hosted its first ever International Tourism Conference this past spring. This conference let hoteliers, tour group operators and other tourism professionals hear from leading representatives of the airline, hotel, cultural, technology and media fields as well as government officials. As reported by the Israeli media, the time was certainly ripe for Jerusalem to host such a conference. A record-breaking 3.45 million tourists visited Israel in 2010, more than 25% higher than the previous year, and 2011 could beat that record as tourism levels have nearly tripled in the past decade. Just days before the conference, 1,000 foreign visitors had joined 9,000 Israelis for Jerusalem's inaugural full marathon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov took the opportunity during this conference to announce some groundbreaking initiatives to reach Netanyahu's stated goal of seeing more tourists than citizens in Israel.
Among these initiatives, said Misezhnikov, are increasing grants to new hotel enterprises from 20 percent to 28%; awarding 10% grants to entrepreneurs planning new tourist attractions; and expanding priority areas to include Eilat, the Lower Galilee, the Negev and the Beit Shean Valley. The Tourism Ministry's budget has been doubled for 2011-2012, he said.
Noting that every satisfied tourist becomes a good-will ambassador for Israel, Misezhnikov revealed that "six major projects are waiting to begin, and we are investing in a broad recruiting campaign to attract personnel to the tourism sector and build 10,000 more hotel rooms so we can provide for one million more tourists than last year. We will also spend tens of millions of shekels to upgrade existing hotels."
About 3,100 additional rooms are expected to be ready by the end of this year, about one-third of them in Jerusalem, 660 near Lake Kinneret in the Galilee region and about 440 others in the northern Negev and Tel Aviv.
Among the new hotels will be a luxury Ritz Carlton on the Tel Aviv coast within the next two years, said Kathleen Matthews, a vice president of Marriott International. Having just opened the tallest hotel in the world, in Hong Kong, Marriott also "wants to be in iconic places such as Jerusalem," Matthews told conference participants. "Our hotels are inextricably linked to the story of the cities we are in."