Encouraged by the growth in Indian visitor number, Israel Ministry of Tourism has adopted aggressive marketing and promotional strategy to further drive Indian numbers. “Israel is an emerging tourist destination in India and witnessed a growth of 13 per cent in 2015. About 40,000 Indians travelled to Israel in 2015. Seeing this growth, we have tripled the marketing budget for India in 2016, to USD three million, to tap travel agents and direct consumers. We are confident that in 2016 more Indians will choose Israel as their favourite holiday destination,” Amir Halevi, Director General, Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT), said while interacting with travel trade and media in New Delhi recently. “Initially, our focus is to tap big cities in India before penetrating deeper into the country to promote Israel as a tourist destination. India is the top source market for Israel in Asia and we want to tap the huge opportunities available here,” he added. Israel attracted over three million visitors globally in 2015.
The delegation led by Halevi comprised of David Maimon, CEO, El Al Airlines; Hassan Madah, Director – IMOT India and Judah Samuel, Director of Marketing – IMOT interacted with travel trade fraternity in New Delhi and Mumbai. The objective of these interactions was to highlight Israel as a leading leisure and MICE destination. Top-of-the-line travel professionals attended and interacted with the IMOT team for understanding the unique offerings to develop new products for Israel. Both the events received an overwhelming response from the travel fraternity.
IMOT in 2016 will use various integrated strategies to woo Indian travellers. Speaking about the strategies, Madah said, “The investments in 2015 like hosting TAFI convention and FAM tours for journalists and travel agents among other activities has led to positive increase in numbers and growing popularity of Israel in India. In 2016, IMOT will have more tourism promotions and activities than ever in India and target the travel trade and direct customers through various marketing tools. We will also target end consumers through marketing on digital platforms. We are sure that through profound strategies we will see a favourable growth in tourist arrivals from India to Israel this year. We are also looking at associating with Bollywood to promote Indian films in Israel.”
El Al provides direct connectivity and is also seeing an increase in the number of bookings from India. El Al now has four weekly flights which will give a great boost to Israel tourism from India. The airline has direct flights from Mumbai to Tel Aviv. “IMOT is also in a discussion with the Civil Aviation Ministry and Indian airlines to have direct flights to Israel from India,” Halevi revealed.
