Israel rejects Israel

THE US government’s decision to retain its travel advisory in which Americans are advised to defer non-essential travel to Israel is unfortunate but has had little effect on the tremendous growth of tourism to Israel from the USA during 2004. In the period Jan-May 2004 US tourism to Israel grew by 70 percent, slightly below the global average of 75 percent but substantial nevertheless. Travelers increasingly understand that government advisories calling on people to defer non-essential travel are not a demand to stop traveling to a country but a government’s assessment of the security risk in traveling.

The United States government ranks among the world’s most cautious in its travel advisory policy. The US government was the last major government to relax its advisory on Kenya and it’s a pattern reflected globally in many US travel advisories.

This is based on an assessment of the risk US citizens face in global travel based on the possibility that US citizens are more likely specifically targeted by terrorist groups than citizens of other countries. 

Whether there is any statistical justification for this assessment is a matter of opinion. The deferral of non essential travel is left up to the traveler to determine what constitutes essential travel. So far as Israel is concerned well over 200,000 Americans of all faiths and from all walks of life will take the decision to visit Israel this year.

It is worth noting that the US remains one of the few significant tourism source market countries for Israel where an advisory of this level is maintained. The fact of the matter in Israel is that tourists are very rarely targeted by terrorists. Over the past 32 years the number of tourists in Israel killed in terrorist attacks is in single digits. To the best of my knowledge there have been no tourists in Israel on organized tour programs killed in terrorist attacks–A safety record for tourists which ranks among the best in the world.

The US government can hardly be accused of rejecting Israel as your headline suggests. All it is doing, rightly or wrongly, is doing what all governments do through travel advisories: protect their citizens from perceived or potential threats. While there is strong evidence to challenge the veracity of the US government’s advisory it should not be construed that the US advisory represents a rejection is Israel.

The travel industry in Australia and now the UK has adopted a far more proactive role in liaising with their governments to ensure that travel advisories do indeed reflect an accurate assessment of risk to travelers involved in traveling to destinations. The World Tourism Organization and Pscific Asia Travel Association have also taken up this issue on a global basis. However, there is little evidence that such a process has even commenced in the United States.

All of us in the industry share a commitment to tourist safety but we also share a commitment to ensuring that the advisories issued by governments are an accurate reflection of risk rather than a butt-covering exercise for foreign ministry bureaucrats to hide behind.

author: David Beirman

David Beirman is the author of “Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisisâ€

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July 30, 2004   Posted in: Israel