Hija Morsi has been a tour guide in Israel for many years, having weathered the global COVID-19 pandemic and now back in the tourism industry. As head of Israel’s Arabic Tour Guide Forum, she has worked with tourists from all over the world and has seen some uncertain times, but nothing to compare to the current situation, with Israel having been at war for nearly 10 months.
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(Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad)
“There are very few jobs,” Mursi told The Media Line. “From October 2023 until today, we have one group from India who continue to convince Israelis to visit the country, but even within the country there are restrictions on where they can travel because of the war.”
Mursi, a father of five, said he was struggling to find a way to make a living.
The war broke out in southern Israel on October 7 and quickly spread to the northern border with Syria and Lebanon. Before the war, Israel’s tourism industry had enjoyed several years of strong growth, with some slowdown due to political unrest in the country until October 7. Before that, the COVID-19 pandemic had also hit the tourism industry.
As a result of the war, most flights to Israel were suspended for several months, and although flights have since resumed, Israel has become less attractive as a tourist destination for foreigners as Israel’s war with Hamas continues to dominate international headlines.
“When the war started, everything stopped and until April, not a single tourist came to Israel,” Moshe Benish, a tourism expert and guide at Aujo Travel, told The Media Line. His current project is creating tour packages for tourists who previously wanted to travel to Israel but decided to go elsewhere. “We Israelis are good at reinventing ourselves. Government support was a joke and the tourism sector completely collapsed,” he added.
According to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, just over 3 million tourists visited Israel from January to October 2023. Before the war, there was a 10% increase in tourists from the United States. 36% of tourists came for sightseeing and 20% for pilgrimage. The average stay in Israel was about 8 nights, enough time to visit all the tourist attractions and historical sites from north to south. These figures have since plummeted.
Before the war, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics predicted that the outlook for inbound tourists to the country was bright, as the number of inbound tourists from the beginning of 2023 would nearly reach the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, a record year for Israeli tourism. That year, 4.5 million tourists entered Israel. But now the outlook is much less optimistic. In June 2024, 97,000 tourists entered Israel, more than three times the number in the same month last year. Since the beginning of 2024, 500,000 tourists have entered the country.
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Masada National Park
(Photo: Ofer Tsuru)
In comparison, just over 2 million tourists visited Israel between January and June 2023. Because of the war, tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from their homes. Many of them have been staying in hotels ever since. This has allowed the hotel business to stay afloat while other tourism-related businesses have struggled. The current situation is different from the pandemic. The tourism industry as a whole was hit hard, but at the time there were more options for domestic tourism as restrictions were gradually lifted. In contrast, because of the war, many areas in the north and south remain inaccessible to tourists due to fighting. This restriction did not exist during the pandemic.
“Unlike the coronavirus, there are a lot more victims to deal with this time,” Benisch said. “Hotels haven’t been hit hard, so the tourism industry’s problems are very localized and no one really seems to care.”
“During the pandemic, the government encouraged tour guides to take up vocational courses in other professions and there were efforts to encourage domestic tourism,” he added. “This time, there is no such initiative. You can’t just throw money around and make people feel poor. They want to feel productive.”
Before the pandemic, there were more than 8,300 registered tour guides in the country, according to the tourism ministry. Recent data shows that number has fallen to about 6,000.
While the pandemic was a global challenge that has shaken up the global tourism industry, this time the impact is local: Hotels are now catering mainly to domestic tourists, and with too few international visitors, tour guides remain out of work.
“Tourists now have choices and can travel wherever they want,” said Wai Lam Chan, executive director of the Moreshet Delek Association for Entry Tourist Guides in Israel.
According to 2020 data from the Ministry of Tourism, Israel’s tourism sector accounts for 2.6% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Before the pandemic, 145,000 people worked in the sector, which was on its way to a full recovery after the pandemic. Some of these workers were Palestinians, who are currently banned from working in Israel, and the sector needs workers. To address the labor shortage, the Israeli government approved work permits for 6,800 workers last month, specifically for the tourism sector.
“For the few tourists who do visit, there are few hotel options, all of which are filled by displaced people,” Adrian Weisberg, president of the Israel Tourist Guides Association, told The Media Line.
Weisberg said many tour guides are over 67 years old and therefore do not qualify for unemployment benefits from the government. Additionally, unemployment benefits are only available to people who have had a minimum amount of work experience before losing their job. Some guides are ineligible because they have not worked for a certain amount of time due to the pandemic.
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Tel Aviv skyline
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“The government should not be so petty and there should be less bureaucracy,” Weisberg said, adding that his group was already distributing food packages to struggling tour guides. “The industry is almost devastated and we have no solutions.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday convened preliminary discussions on the 2025 national budget. With a credit rating downgrade and a soaring budget deficit, it’s unclear how the government will prioritize the tourism sector, or at least address some of its problems.
“People are really suffering,” Chan said. “They’re in debt and in difficult circumstances. Young people can find other work, but for many tour guides, it’s a second or third job. Who wants to employ someone over 60?”
Weisberg’s calendar is now empty, with slots filled through the spring of 2025. Weisberg hopes that by next spring, the schedule will start to fill up again.
Mursi, who says he tosses and turns every night wondering how he will make a living, is also hopeful.
“The sun always rises after the storm,” he said. “I hope that one day tourists will return to the country that I love.”
