According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 100.7 thousand tourists entered Israel during the month of March 2025, compared to 78.6 thousand last year, and 351.9 thousand in March 2023. The Incoming Tour Operators Association in Israel emphasizes that this is not a recovery as the numbers suggest and that the industry is in the deepest crisis it has ever known and as it has been since the beginning of the war.

In the announcement by the Central Bureau of Statistics published today (April 6th, 2025) on visitor arrivals to Israel in March 2025, it is emphasized that approximately 102.3 thousand visitors entered Israel during the month of March, of which approximately 100.7 thousand were tourists. In addition, the announcement also published visitor arrival figures for the first quarter of 2025, according to which 271.5 thousand visitors entered Israel, compared to 206.7 thousand in 2024.

What may resemble a recovery, the Incoming Tour Operators Association in Israel explains, is nothing more than a misinterpretation of the data. The Incoming Tour Operators Association in Israel emphasizes that the last good year for inbound tourism was 2019, before the Corona crisis, when about 450 thousand visitors entered in March. The comparison to 2023, they explain, is irrelevant because it is also not a representative year, since it was the year in which Israel emerged from the Corona crisis.

Yossi Fattel, CEO of the Incoming Tour Operators Association in Israel: “There is no other industry in such a deep crisis in the Israeli economy as the inbound tourism industry. In March 2023, only 65% ​​of the tourists who were supposed to enter entered in a normal year, the last of which was 2019, and since then, world order has been reversed. The tourists who enter Israel today are not tourists in the classic sense of the word. Tourism consists mainly of solidarity delegations, Orthodox students, family visits and businesspeople, so the picture is much more difficult than the numbers show. Unfortunately, the State of Israel is abandoning the industry, which in normal times provides for 15 percent of jobs in the periphery. The Foreign Ministry received a budget of approximately 500 million shekels to improve its image in the world, but Israel’s voice is not heard, while tourism to Israel is an almost exclusive tool for restoring Israel’s image and status in the world”.