While Israelis are eager to go on vacation outside the country’s borders, about 3 million foreign tourists are eager to enter Israel – according to the Ministry of Tourism’s forecasts for 2025.

The estimated income expected for the Israeli economy as a result of their arrival is estimated at about 4.9 billion USD for that year, according to the average total expenditure per tourist, as reported in the ministry’s survey for 2023, which then stood at 1,653 USD.

Two of the ministry’s focus groups for boosting tourism to Israel in the coming year are Jews and pilgrims, with the latter (both groups and individuals) accounting for about a third (32.7%) of the total of about 2.8 million tourists who arrived in Israel in 2023 – according to the ministry’s survey data.

The Iron Sword War did hurt incoming tourism this year, but about a million tourists still decided to conclude a visit here, and most of them belong to the same target groups on which the ministry is building the recovery of Israeli tourism.

The Ministry of Tourism, however, is aiming to increase tourism from the other side of the world – Asia, in light of the increasing demand from the continent to visit Israel. The leading country in the number of tourists to Israel is the Philippines, which ranks fifth in the number of foreign nationals who visited Israel in 2024.

Those most eager to enter Israel first, however, come from another Asian country – Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world, with 227 million inhabitants. Alongside it, there is high demand from another Asian Muslim country – Malaysia, with both countries’ demand stemming from about 9% of their Christian population.

The number of tourists arriving from Indonesia in 2023, for example, was about 24.3 thousand, and from Malaysia about 5.1 thousand that year – according to data from the Ministry of Tourism. These tourists, like tourists from the Philippines, also arrived in Israel during the war and strengthened the local economy. Thus, out of about 824,300 tourists who entered Israel by the end of October this year, about 40 thousand came from the Philippines, about 10.5 thousand came from Indonesia and about 800 from Malaysia. And it is expected that the flow of pilgrim tourists from these countries will only increase.