When will Israelis start traveling again and to where?

we should have had in October 32 Cruise calls bringing almost 100,000 tourists to Israel most probably we will see Airlines returning in December and most of them in January you're listening to a special edition of the Jerusalem Post podcast travel Edition [Music] and welcome to another special edition of the podcast with Mark Gordon and myself David Harris and we want to say a big thank you for the response that we got to the previous special edition following the launch of the Hamas Invasion and the Gaza War that's being fought right now it was always a difficult decision as to whether we carried on podcasting during the war or we left it until after the war but personally I'm very happy that we got the chance to sit down to talk to people about what's going on in Israel and to pay tribute to bartom who was killed in the war we've decided we're going to go with another podcast still focusing on the effects of the fighting that surrounds where Mark and I are sitting right now in Israel but from a different Ang Ang Le this time it's about a week since we sat down and recorded the last podcast and I don't know what you think David I i' I've started to feel a bit of a change in Israel I think people are still mourning people are still very concerned about the war Israel has taken control of Northern Gaza to some extent people are starting to think about what am I going to do in December what am I going to do in January because of the phenomenal actions of the Israeli Defense Forces hopefully hopefully hopefully I'm not tempting fate but the number of rockets coming into Israel from the south at least has diminished demonstrably and therefore people are returning to normaly in fact I just came from where I work my day job and I was chatting to a colleague and she says the truth is just before the war started I booked a skiing holiday to Austria at Christmas and said now I'm actually thinking about going on that vacation which is something she would never have dreamed of saying just s days ago and I've got two colleagues this week who told me they wouldn't be in next week because one's going to America and I think one's going to London I think people are starting to take flights that they booked before the war and whereas there would have been a trepidation to do it maybe as little as a week ago I think people are now if I've got that flight booked and the flight is going let's do it in the last podcast we looked at foreigners coming into Israel this time we're going to look at Israelis and others leaving Israel and for those that listened very carefully last week at the beginning we promised you a story of rescue from Israel but we never actually told that story we're going to tell that story along with looking at the cruise industry and how cruising out of Israel and Beyond has been affected and we'll also be speaking to a man who represents numerous countries around the world and what they use him for is to promote those destinations to Israelis so we're going to be finding out from him what's happened what will happen in terms of where Israelis might go and he's also produced a really interesting report summing up the implications of the last six seven weeks what was the last trip we took David oh my gosh no it wasn't lvia we did another one Slovakia Slovakia yes it was Slovakia there was about 3 weeks between us going to lvia and Slovakia and that was in the summer and since then we haven't traveled generally when we go traveling we're asked to go traveling by a country's tourism board and they will have a representative in Israel either from their own country or they'll be using an Israeli company one of the leading companies in Israel that deals with this area of Tourism marketing is teranova it's based in Tel Aviv and we're about to hear from its Chief Storyteller and founder Dove cman during The Last 5 Years or something I left the selling part of Tourism and moved completely to storytelling which is something I enjoy much more my company called teranova teranova tourism marketing and consultancy the full name we represent tourism destinations and tourism Brands like Thailand which we represent for the last 20 plus years Abu Dhabi Hungary Austria Etc many many more and hotel chains and actually what we are doing is telling the story of those destinations we share the uniqueness be it through the travel trade or directly or to the to the final consumers through media we are actually in charge of the brand awareness of those destinations that makes me Chief Storyteller in our last episode we looked at inbound tourism and how it's coped with an 80% drop in tourists we know that outbound tourism from Israel is a much bigger market so how has that been affected by the war if I'm not mistaken we are something around 1/3 even less of regular traffic of Before the War which is still IR respectable number I mean if you take into consideration that we have 360,000 Israelis in reserve duty and another 200,000 who are kind of refugees in our own place and so many people whose regular life has stopped since that horrible six of October there are Israelis who travel for business or family reasons there are family Israelis need a break some taking longer breaks with the whole families almost from the beginning of the war some are taking break for a short time it's not the regular tourism that we know of before no organized tours or something it's really the need of of getting out for a while and then renewing energy that is the kind of outbound tourism we have as for now you're one of the leading voices in Israel on outbound tourism and last week you held an online conference with 200 Israeli travel agents and at the end of that you produced a report with your thoughts and opinions from that conference and it talks about tourism and how it recovers being optimistic what are the first signs you're expecting to see of recovery and is there any sign that it is starting to recover I had a few phone calls today with with some of the of the leading tour operators and I asked them the question the second question of yours what is happen happening right now I was kind of surprised to hear that they start seeing already a move it's a slight it's not of course not the regular numbers that we know but there is an increase of bookings especially towards p and afterwards the word optimistic is of course the correct one if you are in tourism you must be an optimist you choose for a a profession of light so you can't really be pessimist and be in tourism the business itself in Israel you know dealing with inbound or outbound tourism in a in a country like Israel either you must be out of your mind or you must be really an optimist but still I'm in this market for too long in order just to speak about you know nice wishes what we do see and have seen for so long and so often is that the rebound will be as f pass almost as the drop meaning that the expectation that was mentioned in that survey by the travel agents is that actually traffic will get back to the 20203 figures pre 7th of October within next year if I'm not mistaken it was only a 27% we expected that it might be 20% down compared to last years all the others expect them similar figure and that is based on experience I mean we as Israelis and you know this guys it's not a luxury for us it's as important as any other activity in life in order to live in and enjoy this place you need a break and there is no other way we can't take a car we can't take our bike right and travel just across the border certainly not now anymore I mean sin deser this certainly off the agenda so I honestly believe that we as a Je people the suitcase is part of our DNA it's part of US Travel is not a luxury for Israelis at what point do you see the planes starting to come back the foreign companies and what is it that needs to happen for them to come back highly interesting to note is that two Global Airlines did not give up and continue to fly today and those are two Arab Airlines guys around the world I mean this is something you would not expect we would not expect three years ago that the only International big players are fly Dubai and from Abu Dhabi regarding the other airlines they Chang their announcements almost on a daily level what seems now most probably is that we will see Airlines returning in December not in November yet and most of them in January actually the only thing that stops them from flying is the insurance the insurance policies that the big insurance companies just do not allow them to fly that is the major obstacle whereas the Israeli government has given the Assurance to the insurance companies and therefore they can fly it all depends you know on the outcome of the war how long will it take will it take another two weeks as actually our Minister of Foreign Affairs expected no one really expects the war to end in two weeks time but the heavy fighting the moment that that ends and there will be no missiles anymore flights can come in it will go slowly from January until I expect April we will see all Airlines coming back you mentioned Sinai as a destination that no one will be going to at the moment and will be very slow to recover which destinations do you think will be more popular after the war and which we'll see a drop in their numbers I am quite sure that turkey will take a long time that will take at least two years before we will start seeing serious traffic going back to Turkey that doesn't mean that Turkish Airlines Turkish Airlines is a different story but many Israelis use Turkish Airlines to fly all around the world as regarding the other destination destinations that will gain more traffic highly interesting is that we see in all surveys actually not only ours we see that Central east Europe will be the big winner Czech Republic Hungary Romania because they are perceived as positive regarding Israelis safe that we have not seen any major anti-israel demonstrations over there another destination that will most probably enjoy the decrease of traffic to Turkey and to Morocco is Thailand and we see by the way this is also an interesting phenomenon did you know that the has not been one single cancellation of any L plane to Bankok they continue to fly on a daily level it's sometimes even two flights a day sometimes even to Bangkok and puket on the same day and that's very strange since you don't see any advertisements it's kept quiet people don't put it on Instagram don't regard it as the proper time but they still travel as families as couples through destinations like Thailand I I took part in the wtm the travel fair in London and there it was announced we are the number one in the Mediterranean to to destination like Thailand we are number five worldwide from Europe Americas and Africa in real numbers not per capita these are amazing numbers and this will continue this will continue and we will see even a new phenomenum which I called compensation tourism you will see that traffic to those destinations that are not not regarded as biased and are regarded as safe you will see an increase of traffic in 2024 I think I was listening carefully to your last answer and I think you didn't mention the United Arab Emirates will we see continued growth there how will Israelis feel about going there the reason that I didn't include it in my previous question is actually it's a story on its own this is an amazing story they are losing money these to Airlines and they continue to fly I am completely convinced that the traffic to especially abudabi there will be no negative impact on Israeli outbound tourism too safety is assured and the story of coexistence it's not only storytelling and they do it they keep their words your company works with destinations to make them attractive to Israelis what should those destinations be doing to talk to Israelis now while there's little or no travel that's a great question and of course respect the sensitivity that they are in they cannot come up with the kind of campaigns that we would prefer and like to see the game is complicated I do believe destinations should remain in close contact with the trade as well as with the consumers they should show their empathy they should be there be even if it's not Billboards all around the country that's what I call emotional marketing the relationship between the audience and the destination is much more than nice beaches and great shopping it's feeling that people will need to feel to be welcomed guests to receive a warm welcome and to be received in safety and that message is a message you can't stop it's a message that we have to continue and we do Dove you're the first Chief Storyteller we've had on the public after 70 episodes thank you for coming on and hopefully we will see you again soon thank you so much it was a great privilege and honor and we'll meet in one of the exciting places that we so happy to represent in the market thank you so much Mark and I recently had a conversation with somebody from overseas who is is fairly senior in the marketing area of the cruise industry and we were talking with her about all sorts of plans that she has that we have in terms of promoting cruising around the world but in particular cruising from Israel in 2024 one of her clients is somebody who has been on our podcast before every year we like to present a cruising special and our first cruising special had Z har ROM who is the head of Cruis and tourism at hper Port in Northern Israel as a result of what happened on October 7th there have been major shifts in plans for cruising from Israel in 2024 obviously for the negative so we talked to Zohar about that and other issues around the cruising industry in Israel in the wake of the war unfortunately October and also November are the prime months of income tourism with cruises I mean we should have had in October 32 Cruise calls of fuge ships bringing almost 100,000 tourists to Israel on those ships because during the summer those ships are mainly in Western Mediterranean in the Northern sea in the Baltic Sea and then the weather get cooler in those area and they want to come to us this year October should have been the busiest by far month of the year and basically on the 7th of October during this crazy Saturday we had a huge ship of Holland America docking in the port just starting to take the excursions to the northern part of Israel when all this craziness started and then of course they had to come back and they left at 8:00 p.m. on top of stopping all the home porting activities we also us as a port and Israel as a whole lost a lot a lot of tourist in the short term of course it will be big effect also for the long term 2023 ended brutally I would say when we were talking earlier this year we were talking about 2024 being an even bigger year there were more cruise lines that were going to home Port out of Hyer what was actually going to happen in 2024 who was coming basically 2024 was supposed to be very similar to 2023 we should have had Royal Caribbean coming for a shorter season have MSC and Mano and a little bit of Norwegian the big change will come once we will open the new terminal in 2027 and until then more or less we thought we will see the same pattern of operation we uh anticipated an increase of about 10 to 15% in the incoming tourist coming with cruise calls but in term of uh Home Port I think the 2023 should have looked like 2024 we are aiming more to a big change in 2026 2027 but now things might change one of the unusual things you had to do once the War Began was to evacuate people tell us about the evacuation cruise to use a strange word to Cyprus first we had to bring back Israelis that were on ships of MSC and manoc cruises and the rapsod of the Seas so in the first days after this Saturday on Sunday and Monday Israelis came back through hia port and then we were connected by the US Embassy in Israel and the Foreign Affairs uh Department in the United States saying probably they have t of thousands of Americans living in Israel that should be evacuated as soon as possible and there aren't enough flights to do it so they are bringing Royal Caribbean ship the r the of thec same ship that did the home POR in a hia to take those Americans so of course we had to prepare in two days ourselves for this evacuation with a lot of uncertainties about the specific time that it will happen the number of passengers that will arrive their names cabin assignments everything should have happened very quickly but I remind you we have a very good connection with the operations of Royal Caribbean so we know each other very well and we know to adjust ourselves and to be creative so uh we did it and I was shocked about how the US press were so interested in this story I mean I never had on the peer of hii CNN and ABC and NBC and Reuters and AP and AFP and everybody together doing live coverage for hours but it was very interesting to see that not so many Israeli Americans American citizens Etc that lives in Israel wants to leave Israel this was quite a happy sight for me because at the beginning they talked about maybe five six sailings of this big ship out of hia but once they had this one evacuation Mission they saw that one ship is enough to take people to Cyprus whoever wanted to escape maybe found a flight earlier and all the others are happy to stay in Israel in this crisis time is there any cruising on Mano still operating MSC and who is coming back in 2024 at the moment it took very few days for everybody to understand that 2023 is over even Mano stopped because we know the situation in Israel and the mood in Israel it's not a mood for Israelis to take vacations even if they can financially Etc if they have their spare times no one is in the mood for cruise because cruise is fun Cru is a nice vacation the mood is quite somber obviously so it was very obvious for everybody that it's going to stop very quickly of course all the cruise calls of tourist stopped for the coming month we should have had a beautiful a winter season with celebrity the nice brand of Royal Caribbean not going out of hia but calling hia every few days during the winter which should have been the first winter season that includes Egypt also and it was very experimental and we all waited for it very much but it was cancelled obviously I think what we are going to see in 2024 after Royal Caribbean already announced that they are not calling hia as a Home Port next year we're going to see Mano we hope coming on April for a full season and we really hope to see MC coming with the m see Musa as scheduled and hopefully and probably and maybe taking more Israelis than they took in the first two seasons and allocate more places on the ship for Israelis understanding that for tourists it will be much more complicated to Market in the first few months of the spring to bring the huge number of tourist that they use to bring every Thursday to Israel and probably and hopefully they will take more Israelis because we are all Israelis and we know how it works in our market and at some time in the near future hopefully it will boom and people will want to fly out of Israel with airplanes will want to take cruises out of Israel and the demand at some point will be very high I think we'll have to see when the crucial part of the war is ending I mean for this to happen I can predict it should happen until the end of December for such operation to take place because at some point cruise lines have to find Alternatives you know for the ships they don't want the ships to stand and about Cruise calls of incoming tourists I thinks it's a matter of four five months after the war ends that we'll see them back I'm happy to say that a lot of cruise calls weren't cancelled up until now even for the springtime hopefully that it will be quiet in the coming two or three months when we had those small rounds as we say in Israel with Gaza everything ended in four five days then a week after it cruises came back they understood how it works now of course everything looks much more severe so it will take more time I really hope that at least we'll have the fall season of 2024 which is again booming with Ru so 2027 is The Big Year Lord willing with a new purpose-built Passenger Terminal that's something that you're working on now you've brought in the designers to bring that work can you speed that up to take advantage of this quieter time to help move that process forward you know when I visited galataport in Istanbul a few months ago this is what they told me that they had a lot of bombing and suicide bombing in is and that helped them to speed up the progress but they were just starting to build this new port in Galata those years we are still in the planning situation and unfortunately you know the statuto uh people in Israel are not moving fast enough and not moving faster during war time but I must tell you that every day we are dealing with the new terminal every day we have H meetings with the Israeli Architects and with the international Architects and we are really excited about it and this gives us a lot of escapism time you know to deal with the future and building a new terminal so I can tell you we are speeding everything we can on our side but still the goal year is 2027 hopefully zoha in a few months time we'll have a much more optimistic story to tell we'll have more clarity about what's happening and we'll start to see where MSC are coming we're pretty sure Mano will be there and hopefully we start to see Hyer on the agenda as a HomePort in 2025 I think after the war everybody that is dealing with tourism will have to work very very hard to bringing up the demand to visit Israel from the US and from Europe talking about people like us but mainly about the ministry of Tourism will have to work very very hard because I'm sure the demand to come to Israel to visit Israel was affected significantly in this past months so of course you know me I'm very optimistic always even during Co time I always told the people that are working in the terminal wait you will see that we will boom and this is exactly what happened we saw this boom just after covid now it's more of Israel problem not a global problem so Israel will have to spend also money and a lot of efforts to bring the demand to come to the Holy Land fast and growing fast and of course I'm optimistic but everybody will have to work very very hard I know myself that we have uh during April Cruise Global Convention in Miami and I already prepare myself and prepare all the ship agent and the shore Excursion managers and the to operators that we will have to work very very hard to bring this business to climb back to what we planned before this world with people like you on board I'm sure highport will shine through all of this and continue to grow zoh Haram thank you once again for your time thank you something I didn't mention at the start of the podcast and I think you're probably um to some extent in the same boat is travel for Israelis right now going overseas when you've already booked prior to October the 7th but the world has changed so significantly that your plans are scuppered and what do you do so where am I going with this round about introduction David where are you going I'm not my wife was meant to be going to the United States and she booked with United Airlines earlier this week when we were recording and we're recording this the middle of November you sent me a news article saying that United Airlines had decided to resume flights to and from Israel day later United Airlines published a denial saying that they weren't resuming imminently that's as we stand right now by the time you listen to this things might have changed but that's the type of thing that those people who need to leave Israel to visit family whatever it is are having to deal with right now I'm sorry for sending you that story about United the PR Company got ahead of themselves but I don't think the PR Company would have said anything if those discussions weren't happening at United they're not going to make that up in my day job I occasionally get involved with people talking about international travel advice whether it's safe to come to Israel or not that is regularly up for discussion and I think that will be the trigger to Airlines coming back once the travel advice says you can come but be aware as opposed to only come if it's essential then I think some of the insurance companies will give permission to the airlines to fly it will be very very interesting to monitor to watch which airlines are the first to jump in which are later how much of that is financially based remember in our last pod that one of our guests Mark Feldman says that these companies don't do things for love they do it for money so we'll see which ones com in first but also there is of course the political element and it will be interesting to see those countries that are being more outspoken regarding their relationship with Israel at what point they come back in and we should take note of the fact that some lines are currently traveling to Israel some stopped and started and some never ceased their service all of the Israeli airlines are traveling but to a more limited destination set and you have other airlines like usbekistan air Bulgaria Air Fly Dubai fly Dubai EAD and some smaller airlines out of Romania and a couple of other countries Cyprus in particular mova I think so those airlines are still traveling so that will be the real trigger to everything restarting Before We Say Goodbye we want to say thank you to Dove and Zohar we'd love to hear your comments on this podcast you can do that by finding us on social media at Mark davidp pod or by mailing us Mar davidp pod atgmailcom hopefully but we can't guarantee it the next time you hear us will be some of our pods that we recorded before October the 7th we have one or two recordings that we have haven't released and I hope I really hope that we're in a position where we can share those with you so if you haven't already subscribed or followed please do we try certainly normal times we bring you a podcast once every two weeks and hopefully as Mark just hinted the ones going forward will be back to more of our normal podcast where we can talk about travel about destinations and about bringing joy and a breath of fresh air for All of Us Des desite the difficult times your feedback does mean a lot to us so please keep that coming either on social media we have a Facebook page we're on Instagram we're on Twitter just let us know what you think for now we say goodbye and we wish you good health and only good news goodbye