11/08/2019 16:51

The Germans returned to Israel

[IMG=18413-4014] The German travel concern TUI made a decision to reactivate work with the Israeli destination, a couple of years after its discontinuation due to the intifada. The message was published on the official site of TUI. Operators launched a chain of charter flights from Munich to Tel-Aviv and also announced their intention to buy a 50% stake in the business of the accepting Israeli company Holiday Travel Ltd for servicing its own tourists. The plan of the company is to reach the number of 30 000 in the coming season while in 2004/05 TUI only sent 1555 people to Israel whom were mostly from the Netherlands. The interest of the German travel market in Israel is illustrative. If Germans tourists, for whom safety is the first priority, return, then the crisis of the Israeli tourist destination connected with the escalation of violence in the region is seen as being made irrelevant. Russian tour operators also state the growth of demand. ‘The interest of tourists has increased. It can be seen from excursion tours, and holidays on the Mediterranean and Red seas’, says Ludmila Zolotukhina, general director of Big Travel 2000. The dynamic of change is obvious when looking at the increased volume of flights. At the moment from Moscow to Tel-Aviv there are 4 daily regular flights of ‘Transaero’ and El al. From November 6th, a fortnightly flight to Eilat will be operated by Transaero. ‘What is more, in the beginning of January a charter flight by El Al is carried out to this resort’, says Alexander Baras, general director of ‘E-picket’. – ‘Sales are going so well that the possibility of substitution of the plane for a bigger one is being discussed’. Yet the increased demand is not enough to launch long charter flights. An example is the fate of the program to Eilat consolidated by the pool of operators ‘Pheonix aviation’, tour agency ‘Sibir’ and ‘Base travel’. According to the plan, the airline company ‘Russia’ should have made flights on Sundays from the 30th of October till the end of March, but only 4 charters were made: from the 27th of November it was decided to cancel the program. ‘It is connected with the low load. It is unusual as in the beginning it was very easy to sell seats and the demand was higher than predicted’, comments Olga Astrakhantseva, director of Moscow office of ‘Sibir’ company, ‘It is possible that the program will be re-started after the New Year’.